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THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1904. 



A Survey of the Larger World Movements. 

THE Year 1904 has been marked, throughout the world, 
by a disappearance of worm-eaten and traditional esti- 
mate, dealing and diplomacy, and by a fresh and earn- 
est return face to face with first principles. The Occident, 
represented, it is true, in its most highly orientalized member, 
has come into clash with the Orient, represented, it is also true, 
in its most highly westernized member. Pure secular democ- 
racy has dared pure sacred despotism to come forth from its 
lair. Great political and great money powers have been 
brought to the test at the bar of character. Subtle and 
mighty movements have felt it necessary to justify them- 
selves, for the first time in many years, on their moral 
grounds. A great revolution of internal political policy has 
taken place in Russia. The military hero of the rough riders 
and the war-master of America has put himself forward as 
the champion of the world's peace. A large portion of the 
American people has broken from party restraint, and placed 
in power a president in whom their hearts evidently trusted. 

Clear, large, simple outlines — developments unsmother- 
ed and rushing to the. clash— a dealing with great issues not 
by feint, but in the open, this is the ear mark of the year 
through which we have passed. 

Take one simple but comprehensive illustration : 

THE President's message is a refreshing thing. In it he 
evidently speaks out his whole heart and mind, un- 
trammeled by any fears of political policy. His recent . 
election revealed to him that a large, majority of the people | 
of this country believed in him as a man, and were satisfied I 



}}y transfer 



with the integrity of his purposes. Mr. Roosevelt is at heart 
a social reformer, and in the days of his youth belonged to a 
coterie of social dreamers that might almost be regarded as 
Utopian in their schemes. He has succeeded in making the 
most remarkable personal, ethical, and social impression upon 
the people that ever was achieved by any President. And it 
was time. The love of wealth, the corrupt forms and prin- 
ciples of a decaying English aristocracy, the increasing love 
of pleasure as a chief end of life among our American youth, 
and certain conspicuous American immoralities, were rushing 
our country on toward social ruin. 

The President had prepared the people for this remark- 
able expression of his views by already declaring that he was 
for peace, and not for war ; but in his message, war has com- 
paratively the most inconspicuous place of all. The navy and 
army are relegated to the end of the document and together 
constitute but one-eighteenth of the message, and the. Philip- 
pines with their issues are as comparatively small. 

The meeting of the International Peace Conference in 
Boston early in October, the President's promise to try to call an- 
other Peace Conference at The Hague, his announcement 
that the administration is negotiating arbitration treaties with 
all the Powers that will enter into such negotiations, and Sec- 
retary Play's address at the opening of the Boston Confer- 
ence, claiming that when The Hague Conference lay ap- 
parently wrecked, at the beginning of its career, it was the 
American government which gave it the breath of life; and 
that we have set an example to the world during the past two 
years in the matter of disarmament, bringing away from the 
Far East 55,000 soldiers and reducing our Army to its mini- 
mum of 60,000 men, seem to give, countenance to the earnest- 
ness of the President's intentions. When we recall the fact 
that Frederic W. Holls, the secretary of The Hague Confer- 
ence and a most indefatigable laborer for the world's peace, 
was a warm personal friend and co-worker of Roosevelt's, the 
actions of the President seem natural. On the other hand, 
as a contrast to this beautiful picture of American peace, Sec- 
retary Hay was promptly told that the Mexican war was a 



national crime, as it was ; that the Spanish war was unneces- 
sary, that the war in the Philippines was a war to establish by 
subjugation a dominion to which we had taken title as a prize 
of victory in another war, entered upon with a profession of 
purely philanthropic intentions, and that Spain had not pro- 
posed to relinquish the Philippines, but we insisted that they 
should be ceded to us as a possession. Critics of the Presi- 
dent's peace, policy sarcastically pictured Secretary Hay as 
"the meek aureoled apostle of conciliation and arbitration in- 
voked to beam serenely" on the foreign representatives of 
peace who appeared in Boston. 

The Dutch government has taken no action as yet in 
erecting the Palace of Peace. A year and a half ago, in May, 
1903, Mr. Carnegie paid over his gift of a million and a half of 
dollars for this purpose, but Holland has been holding it, and 
the money lies idle in the state treasury. The government 
has not secured a site, nor shown any interest in the edifice. 
The city authorities at The Hague have vetoed a proposition 
for sanctioning the erection of the building in the capital's 
beautiful pleasure grounds, which is chiefly a forest. The 
master of the Queen Mother's household has suggested that 
it would be better to give the money back to the American 
millionaire, than to sacrifice the trees in the park, and a mem- 
ber in the city council has characterized the Carnegie money 
grant as a "white elephant." The Queen is reported to have 
declared recently that the indifference of the Dutch public 
was a scandal and that something must be done. Meantime 
the international court of arbitration has settled three im- 
portant cases. 

BUT let us pass from the topic of the world's peace to an- 
other matter in the President's message : What the 
President really emphasizes is our social life. Several j 
years ago we pointed out the fact that Roosevelt was essen- | 
dally a preacher, and his present message is an illustration ol | 
this fact. Duty is the keynote in every topic treated; He I 
first of all gives attention to the relation of man to man in his 
daily activities as they come under the seventh, eighth, ninth 



and tenth Commandments ; and he then proceeds to an appli- 
cation of the fourth and sixth Commandments to our Ameri- 
can people under an ingenious discussion of a proper national 
ideal for the city of Washington, which is under federal con- 
trol, and which he believes should be set up as a model for 
the best American metropolitan life. 

He tells labor that it has the right, and even the duty, to 
organize. It has the right also to endeavor to persuade its 
own to join organizations. It has a legal right, "which, ac- 
cording to circumstances, may or may not be a moral right, 
to refuse, to work in company with those who refuse to join 
their organizations. It has no right to seek proper ends by 
improper means,* and such instances should not for one mo- 
ment be tolerated. Mob law is intolerable in any form." 

He lays down law for the railroads. Not only should the 
commerce of our country be forwarded, but the. lives of the 
traveling public should be guarded. Hours for railroad em- 
ployees should be limited and only trained and experienced 
persons be employed. Drastic punishment should be visited 
on any railroad employee, officer or man, who by issuance of 
wrong orders or by disobedience of orders causes disaster. ** 

Great corporations are necessary and serviceable, and 
should not be dealt with intemperately. The American people 
should show good sense, moderation, the earnest desire to 
avoid doing any damage, and yet the quiet determination to 

*An extreme illustration of the President's doctrine here was found at 
the opening of the year in the hearse and carriage drivers strike in Chicago. 
1600 drivers striking for better pay and shorter hours interfered with fun- 
erals to such an extent as was said to create a situation dangerous to the 
city'e health. One man drove the hack containing the body of his wife and 
ke.pt the strikers back with a revolver. A private ambulance bearing a dy- 
ing man was attacked by union pickets. One undertaker held a "Union- 
label funeral." A cartoon represented a dead man as leaping from his 
coffin and refusing to be buried in a non-union cemetery. The, profanation 
of human sorrow, and failure to observe the respect due the presence of 
death, seem to have called forth stronger protests in the name of common 
humanity, than the violence of mobs in other times and ways. 

**In the management of American railroads much is to be admired. 
Though the highest wages in the world are paid to railroad men in America, 
the charge for carrying freights is lowest, and yet the stocks and bonds or 
American railroads are regarded as a good investment by foreigners. Amer- 
ican through trains, while not as safe as those on the continent of Europe, 
have the advantages of comfort and, as a rule, much greater speed. The 
coupe or email coach system of traveling so common on the continent, is 
far outstripped by American methods, which are now being adopted in 
Europe. 



5 

proceed step by step, without halting and without hurry, in 
eliminating or at least in minimizing whatever of mischief or 
of evil there is to interstate commerce in the conduct of great 
corporations. Publicity, and not secrecy, will win hereafter. 
A complete stop must be put to rebates. And while the Pres- 
ident does not mention particular corporations in this connec- 
tion, his description of his intentions may lead us to expect 
a great battle in the future between the government and 
standard violators of sound business justice. 

Within the last two years much has been done by the 
country in this line. Congress passed an act to expedite anti- 
trust hearings (Feb., 1903), created the new department of 
commerce and labor with a bureau of corporations (Feb. 14, 
1903), gave the interstate commission power to deal with 
secret rebates in transportation charges (Feb. 19, 1903). The 
attorney general has restrained by injunction fourteen of the 
great railroad systems from giving illegal rebates to favored 
shippers, officers of railroads in the cotton carrying pool were 
indicted, the beef trust was put under injunction, the North- 
ern Securities Company has been destroyed, the Supreme 
Court has decided, in the coal carrying suit, that books and 
papers must be produced. 

BUT the President's strongest words are for fashionable 
American society, and particularly for the semi-Euro- 
pean circles that attempt to set false American stand- 
ards in the nation's capital: "In the first place, the people of 
this country should clearly understand that no amount of in- 
dustrial prosperity and, above all, no leadership^ in interna- 
tional industrial competition can in any way atone for the sap- 
ping of the vitality of those who are usually spoken of as the 
working classes. The farmers, the mechanics, the skilled ana 
unskilled laborers, the small shop keepers, make up the bulk 
of the population of any country, and upon their well being, 
generation after generation, the well being of the country and 
the race depends. No Christian and civilized community can 
afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the 
youth of to-day. For if so the youth will have to pay a heavy 



penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the to- 
morrow." 

The President points, above all, above politics, competi- 
tive business, capital and sport, to the value of the race itself, 

and the home : 

"It is very desirable that married women should not work in factories. 
The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner. The prime 
duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of 
tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the 
tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these 
two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably 
favorable circumstances. If a race does not have plenty of children, or if 
the children do not grow up, or if when they grow up they are unhealthy in 
body and stunted or vicious in mind, then that race is decadent, and no 
heaping up of wealth, no splendor of momentary material prosperity, can 
avail in any degree as offsets." 

This plain and serious view of marriage is the. one for 
which the Lutheran Church has always stood, and the Presi- 
dent is a preacher of Lutheran doctrine at least on this point. 
The Lutheran marriage service, in recognition of this teach- 
ing, contains several paragraphs from which refined people, 
at first sight at least, often shrink. Thus it quotes the Scrip- 
ture: 

"God created man in His own image; male and female created He them. 
And God blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and 
replenish the earth." 

Thus also the marriage collect says: 

"Almighty God, who didst create man and woman, and didst join them 
together in marriage, making them fruitful by Thy blessing, thereby signi- 
fying the mystery of the union betwixt Thy Son Jesus Christ and His Bride 
the Church: We beseech Thine infinite goodness, let not this Thy blessed 
work an 1 ordinance be set aside, or brought to naught," etc. 

That the primal duty of man is to plant a home, in the 
fullest sense of the word ; and the first consideration in a home 
is not congenial recreation and rest, but that children are as es- 
sential to sound home life as arrows are to the quiver, or fruit 
to the vine and olive tree, is brought out even more remark- 
ably by the President in an earlier letter on "race suicide." 

"If a man or woman," writes Mr. Roosevelt, "through no fault of hla 
or hers, goes throughout life deprived of those highest of all joys which 
spring only from home, life, from the having and bringing up of many 
healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy. . . . 
But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart 
so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dis- 



like children, is, in effect, a criminal against the race and should be an ob- 
ject of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people." 

Such is not at all the view of polite society, and of our 
cultured young people of to-day. So far astray does the deli- 
cate and luxurious intellectual life of the age, in which the in- 
dividual himself becomes the chief concern, and sacrifice of 
one's own selfish ends and comfort is not a dominating consid- 
eration, that carnal motives are often imputed, with a sneer, to 
men who have the courage to take the old view and stand up 
for God and the race. We will not say that the advice of the 
Apostle Paul, on his grounds, is not to be held in consideration 
as sound throughout on this point, nor that conditions of physi- 
cal decline should be overlooked, nor that the coarse and sen- 
sual motive does not prevail in the average man of society and 
of the world ; but we do affirm that the integrity of purpose, 
purity of motive, and joy and culture of heart in the bosom 
of a large and self-sacrificing family-life, are immeasurably 
loftier than, for instance, the evidently self-centred, comfort- 
accepting, pleasure-loving, and consequence-avoiding life of 
the cultured young woman professor in one of our universities 
who has created a sensation by making the following state- 
ment, in which, mark you, there is no revolt against evil desire, 
and sinful indulgence, but only against physical consequence. 
Yea! here the rebellion, and it is typical, is not against the 
wrongs of human social life , but against that which is highest, 
holiest and most glorious in it, namely, motherhood! 

The young woman professor writes : 
"I am not prepared to say that I absolutely refuse to accept the charge 
of motherhood, but I do refuse — and I have no words to express the loathing 
with which I regard the idea — to be looked upon as a mere means of swell- 
ing the census report. Stripped of its fine language, this is what all this 
prating of the beauty of large families amounts to. I do not believe that 
there is, or ever has been, a large family which resulted from anything so 
high-minded as the deliberate, desire of both parents to rear good citizens 
for the State." 

The words of the President have moved The Lutheran 
Standard, one of the most serious and earnest of our church 
papers, to speak as follows : 

"Large families have come to be regarded as a great burden, an intoler- 
able responsibility. The, woman who gives birth to many children is looked 
down upon with pity and contempt, rather than looked up to with honor and 



8 

respect. The pain and the suffering connected with maternity, notwith- 
standing what the Scriptures say on the matter, are declared to be the, im- 
position on womankind of a burden which no man should ask his wife to 
carry. Many married people, who consider themselves respectable, and are 
considered respectable by their neighbors, are before God known to be re- 
sorting to wicked, ofttimes criminal, practices, in order to avoid having 
children. This is a grievous thing, and calls for earnest protest on the part 
of right-thinking people. 

"The woman whose purpose in being married is to lead a fashionable 
life, preside over a fashionable home, and spend her husband's money, miss- 
ed her calling when she entered the marriage estate. Human butterflies 
make poor mothers. According to Scripture it is not a disgrace, but an 
honor, to be a parent. Are, our Lutheran married people imitating the wick- 
ed example which the fashionable worldling is setting? Are our Lutheran 
women, through wicked habits, becoming like their pale, nervous, broken- 
down, foolish sisters? God forbid! 'Be not deceived: God is not mocked.' 
Such violations of divine and natural law will have their reward, here and 
hereafter. May the love of God and of Christ so fill the hearts of our peo- 
ple, that they will obey cheerfully the laws of God, and follow in His ways." 

From the home, the President turns to speak for a mo- 
ment on child training, as it should be practiced by the state : 

"Tn the vital matter of taking care of children much advantage could be 
gained by a careful study of what has been accomplished in such states as 
Illinois and Colorado by the juvenile courts. The work of the juvenile 
court is really a work of character building. It is now generally recognized 
that young boys and young girls who go wrong should not be treated as 
criminals, not even necessarily as needing reformation, but rather as needing 
to have their characters formed, and for this end to have them tested and 
developed by a system of probation." 

THE President recognizes and very clearly delineates the 
limits between the rights of the nation and the rights of 
the various states. He devotes attention to the work 
that his government is accomplishing in forwarding the 
art of agriculture, in preserving the forests, and he points out 
the difficulties in securing first-class Indian agents. His dis- 
cussion of the postal service has no reference to the frauds 
which he has unearthed.* 

The President lays down a point of interest for the na- 
tional agitators that are so prolific in America: 

"Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern 
ourselves wiih striving for our own moral and material betterment here at 
home than to concern ourselves with trying to better the condition of things 

*It is an interesting fact that the revenues of the United States post office have 
increased from $76,000,000 in 1895 to $144,000,000 in 1904. 



in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and 
under ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general uplifting of 
humanity by striving with heart and soul to put a stop to civic corruption, 
to brutal lawlessness and violent race prejudices here at home than by pass- 
ing resolutions about wrongdoing elsewhere. Nevertheless there, are occa- 
sional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to 
make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to 
show our disapproval of the. deed and our sympathy with those who have 
suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justi- 
fiable. There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our broth- 
er's eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our own." 

He, however, defends the right of the American people, 
which in spite of its own short comings, yet as a whole shows 
by its consistent practice of its belief in the principle of civil 
and religious liberty and of orderly freedom, "among whom 
even the worst crime, like the crime of lynching, is never 
more than sporadic," to give expression to its horror against 
the massacre of the Jews in Kishieneff or against the cruelties 
practiced upon the Armenians. 

The President deals with the principle of immigration on 
very broad lines. "First and foremost let us remember that 
the question of being a good American has nothing whatever 
to do with a man's birthplace any more than it has to do with 
his creed. In every generation from the time this government 
was founded, men of foreign birth have stood in the very fore- 
most ranks of good citizenship. To try to draw a distinction 
between the man whose parents came to this country and the 
man whose ancestors came over a few centuries back is a mat- 
ter of absurdity. Good Americanism is a matter of heart, good 
conscience, lofty aspiration and sound common sense, but not 
of birthplace or of creed. Among the men of whom we are 
most proud as Americans no distinction whatever can be drawn 
between those whose parents came over in a sailing ship or 
steamer, and those whose ancestors stepped ashore into the 
wooded wilderness at Plymouth nearly three centuries ago." 
Thus is nativism dealt a sturdy and stunning blow. 

The President proceeds, "There is no danger of having 
too many immigrants of the right kind, if they are sound in 
body and in mind and above all if they are of good character. 
But we should not admit masses of men whose standards and 



IO 

personal habits are such that they tend to lower the level of the 
American wage earner." 

During the last six months, since July i, 1904, the arrivals 
of immigrants have been more than 375,000, and they are still 
coming in at the rate of 2500 a day. In the last two years more 
than two millions have been added to our population by the 
increase of emigration. Italy contributes more to the growth 
of our population than any other country, Austria coming sec- 
ond, Russia third, and Sweden fourth. Sweden has sent us 
about 30,000 of her sons and daughters during this past year. 
There is a large falling off in the emigration of all these coun- 
tries, and an increase of immigrants from England. We should 
very much like to go into the details of this subject of immigra- 
tion, and trust that we may be able to do so at some time 
in a special article. 

The President makes a strong protest against clogging 
the wheels of justice, especially when the criminals are such as 
are against the general government itself, instancing the cases 
of Reavers. Green, Gaynor and Renson. 

Here is the highest executive of the American people 
turned preacher, and preaching nothing less than a social and 
political revolution. There are no platitudes and no platform 
planks in these words. We are face to face with first prin- 
ciples. 

DURING the year 1904 Congress settled many important 
matters, for good or for ill. It passed the Cuban Reci- 
procity bill. It ratified a treaty with Cuba, which car- 
ries out the terms of the Piatt amendment. It ratified the Pan- 
ama Canal Treaty and provided a bill for the government of 
the Canal zone. It ratified a treaty with China providing for 
two open ports in Manchuria, and reinforced the Chinese ex- 
clusion laws. It provided a joint Commission to study meth- 
ods of upbuilding the American Merchant Marine. It loaned 
$4,600,000 to the St. Louis Exposition. It ordered the 
Department of Commerce to make an inquiry into the beef 
trust. It lined the Philippines under the coast wide wise trade 
laws. Altogether it lias passed T400 bills, mostly of a special 



II 

character, and its appropriations reached nearly $800,000,000. 
This Fall it has instituted a searching' investigation into the 
qualifications of Senator Smoot, and has brought out some 
startling evidence respecting Mormonism which the American 
people has never yet had before it.* 

Congress has also agreed to the impeachment of Judge 
Swayne, of Florida, of whose doings we happen to know a great 
deal in a private way. On the other hand Congress has post- 
poned action on measures for the benefit of the Philippines,! 
Hawaii and Porto Rico. It has not taken decided action 
against the trusts, nor increased the power of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission.f 

A popular revolution in the state of Missouri has over- 
thrown the corruption that centered in the political powers at 
St. Louis, and has elected the District Attorney who convicted 
the corrupt politicians to the governorship of the state. 

ANOTHER signal illustration of the tendency to brush 
aside technical discussion on great issues and to return 
to primal moral principles is to be found in the sudden 
development of the moral obligations of Telegraph Companies 

*The counsel against Smoot expect to show that the Mormon Church in 
morals, politics, and business, is a menace to American institutions, and 
that a man identified with the Mormon hierarchy is unfit to be a United 
States Senator, and incapable of performing the duty of that office. It is 
claimed that the Mormon Church has violated the compact under which 
Utah was admitted as a State, and that the violations have been connived at 
by the officers of the Church. The counsel has brought to light terrible 
Mormon oaths which members of the church are required to take. 

The chairman of the Democratic State Committee of Idaho testified, 
only a week or two ago, that the growing power of the Mormon church was 
made the leading issue by the Democrats and Independents in the last cam- 
paign. He said that the Mormon population of Idaho is instructed by apos- 
tles from Utah as to how to vote. He declared that it is impossible for 
any man or any party to stand against the Mormon church in Idaho. Six of 
the twenty-one counties are known as solidly Mormon, and in all the south- 
ern counties the Mormon church is practically in charge of the legislature, 
and of political and delegate conventions. The delegates elected are not al- 
ways Mormon in religion, but they are. always Mormon in political action. 
He said further that if one who has been a Mormon were to vote a Demo- 
cratic ticket and it were known, he would be ruined in business. 

jOn December 16th the. Senate after all passed a Philippine bill relating 
to customs, exemption of municipal bonds from taxation, the issuance of 
bonds for public improvements, sewers, and drainage systems, primary 
schools, and railroads, whose stock issues are to be restricted to the amount, 
of actual cash investment. 

tSecretary Garfield has just brought his plan of a federal license of cor- 
porations before Congress. 



12 

I ' 

which arose last May like a storm-cloud out of a clear sky, and 
which obliged one of the most powerful corporations in the 
land, the Western Union Telegraph Company, to change its 
business course and make a complete tack in its sailing. 

It is quite true that there is some ground for the cynicism 
which sneers at the motives often found beneath a popular out- 
break of feeling against large organizations that are indirect 
abettors of law-breaking. But Christians may be glad for 
such reaction. The weakening of the sense of responsibility, 
in men, for the moral influence of their property and their acts, 
under corporate relationships, is one of the evils of modern 
business life. The common promptings of sound humanity are 
disregarded. Men who would not dream of renting their own 
buildings for doubtful or immoral purposes do not consider 
their share of responsibility when the same thing is done 
through a company in which they are interested. We are told 
that men who would not bribe a legislator to accomplish the 
dearest wish of their lives, are content not to inquire too closely 
into the contingent expenses of a great corporation to which 
they lend their names or from which they draw their money. 
And the reason for this neglect of duty is clear. It has not 
been made sufficiently plain to the conscience of the American 
public that the act of a corporation is in theory the act of those 
who compose it, and that the introduction of intermediaries 
does not break the chain of responsibility. Truly edifying is 
it to hear a secular paper announce that "the old notion that 
a corporation has no soul to save, leads men to forget that, 
after all, a corporation is only a shell containing many men 
with souls to save." 

In the case of the Western Union Telegraph Company it 
appears that Captain Norton Goddard approached the com- 
pany last April in the guise of a poolroom magnate and found 
that the company was ready to run a wire down the chimney 
of his house to supply his supposed poolroom with news of 
the races, and to send him an operator who was an expert at 
jumping out of the window. The captain made all this public 
through the papers. 

Now the Western Union Telegraph Company is com- 



13 

posed of such respectable and eminent directors as Chauncey 
Depew, Morris K. Jesup, George J. Gould, Jacob H, Schiff, 
and J. P. Morgan. Several of these men felt themselves scan- 
dalized in these deeds, and Senator Depew threatened to re- 
sign from the Board. President Clowry, who originally came 
to New York with an excellent reputation, defended his com- 
pany by a plea in the papers that the Western Union is bound 
to transmit any message offered, and he said that he would 
withdraw the telegraph wire from any poolroom when notified 
of its existence by the police. He said that the Western Union 
is not authorized to scrutinize messages with reference to their 
moral burden and it is bound under the law to transmit ail 
messages if couched in decent language. "This company has 
nothing to do with the racing Associations nor with the race 
track. It does not own a share of stock in any race associa- 
tion. We have one of the largest directories in the world and 
each one is a good, moral man. I have never been in a gamb- 
ling house or poolroom in all my life. I want to do the right 
thing and so do all our directors." 

This excuse of the Western Union was sustained as ade- 
quate by eminent private authorities, including the Philadel- 
phia Ledger, which raised the question as to how far a pri- 
vate corporation operating telegraph lines would be justified 
in setting up as a censor of morals and in ascribing motives to 
those offering messages. It claimed that the company is a 
private person whose duties are exhausted in the transmission 
of messages, and it must not be assumed that a corporation en- 
gaged in sending telegraph messages is bound or is free to 
inquire into their morality. 

Unfortunately, for the Western Union and for the wise 
dictum of the Public Ledger, no less a personage than the po- 
lice commissioner of New York reported that the Western 
Union had a far better knowledge of the inner side of the pool- 
rooms than his own police, that Western Union operators were 
in them, that Western Union inspectors were on guard, and 
that a Western Union treasurer was in receipt of daily exor- 
bitant tribute. It was also shown that the Western Union 
Company instead of merely transmitting messages of the races 



14 

was itself collecting - this class of news and selling- it to the pool- 
rooms at exorbitant prices. In fact the police Commissioner 
charged that the Western Union has a distinct department of 
its business specially organized to facilitate law-breaking, and 
that it receives special prices for this disgraceful work. 

Evidently it is no part of the legitimate business of a tele- 
graph company, whether it be a private person or a common 
carrier, to maintain a crew of men skilled to string wires in 
secret places where the officers of the law will not detect them. 
to maintain hidden exchanges whence with the aid of pass 
words, known law-breakers can receive information necessary 
to their criminal business. When a telegraph operator is in- 
structed by his company to jump out of a window in case of a 
police raid, and to cooperate with his patrons in covering up 
their offences, he is certainly doing something more than his 
duty as an agent for the delivery of messages. The assistance 
given by the company to gamblers is not incidental, and this 
assistance was not beyond the control of the President of the 
company. 

We enlarge upon this discussion because it is an unusually 
good illustration of the sophistry that is employed to justify 
doubtful business dealings. No company is under obligations 
to furnish news to people engaged in a criminal business. The 
use of the United States mail is forbidden to these people. 
Their existence depends on the favor of the Telegraph Com- 
pany. The directors may say that there is no law to forbid 
them to furnish this service or to compel them to inquire into 
the use which is to be made of it. But neither is there any law 
which obliges them to permit themselves to he used as instru- 
ments of crime. Many wrongs not under statutory interdict, 
are such that no business man of sound morality can or should 
tolerate. 

So clearly was this position brought out that the direc- 
tors of the company decided to quit gathering and selling race 
news. Mr. Clowry, the Superintendent, no doubt under or- 
ders from the Executive Committee, announced to the com- 
pany's General Superintendents at New York, Chicago, San 
Francisco and Atlanta that it had been decided to discontinue 



i5 

forthwith "the collection and distribution" of horse race re- 
ports and directed them to act accordingly. It is said that 
George Gould cooperated in this reform. 

All right minded persons should hope that this is a perma- 
nent and not temporary decision, and that the general principle 
of a deeper sense of moral responsibility as applied to modern 
cooperative action will be extended to other cases, and the 
minds of the American people be opened more clearly to moral 
issues. 

LAST year there was no question more widely discussed 
than the morality of the action of the President in the es- 
tablishment of the independence of Panama, in order to 
further the completion of the Isthmian canal. More recently the 
Panama republic itself has gotten into difficulties with the Pres- 
ident and our government, because it feared that we would 
either prevent or absorb the whole of its commercial income. 
The new Secretary of War, Taft, was despatched to Panama, 
and, on December 12th, arrived at a complete understanding 
with that republic. No trade for the canal zone or Panama 
can enter the United States ports at either end of the canal. 
The United States agrees that Panama is to have full authority 
over her own citizens, and Panama agrees to a reduction in 
tariff and postage rates. 

Judge Taft reports that a great deal of work has already 
been done under American supervision. The former owners 
of the site left machinery, dredges and rolling stock to the 
value of twenty million dollars, but only two million dollars' 
worth of this property could be utilized. The canal commis- 
sion has invited bids for a supply of steam dredges, and the 
makers of these dredges must demonstrate their capacity by ac- 
tual use in the canal for two weeks prior to receiving payment. 
It has been discovered that the French engineers made some 
important errors in their data. One of these is that the height 
of the Culebra has been over-estimated, and another that clay 
and sand are found at some spots in bottoms where the French 
engineers reported solid rock. The coming year will be one 
of great progress on this waterway which is destined to bear 



i6 

the commerce of the world from the sea of the East to that of 
the West at an enormous saving of time and expense. 



IF we lift our eye from America to the circle of the nations, 
the most prominent event to stand before our vision is the 

war that broke out between Russia and Japan on the 6th 
of last February, by severance of diplomatic relations. Dis- 
cussion as to the technical responsibility of each party for be- 
ginning hostilities, the wrong of Russia in delaying diplomacy, 
and the wrong of Japan in brushing it aside, — soon gave way 
to a more substantial consideration of the real and larger 
causes of war in the background ; and to a premonition of grave 
consequences. 

The whole question between Europe and Asia loomed like 
a specter of the ages to the thoughtful mind. The check given 
to the Arab at Tours, and to the Tartar six centuries later by 
the Poles, the repulse of the Turks from the siege of Vienna, 
and the organization of the British East India Company, were 
recalled. That to-day all the North in Asia is held by Russia 
and all the South by England, with Persia under Russian con- 
trol, and the Turkish Empire surviving only through European 
jealousy, is regarded as the subconscious cause of driving 
Japan into the lists. If Japan wins, a half of Asia and a third 
of the human race will retain its own self-development and 
self-rule. If Russia wins, the Asian sun sets not to rise. 
Japan is fighting the battle of the Orient against the Occident. 
Civilized as Japan is, and full of European science, she is at 
bottom still Asiatic, pagan, a hater of the selfish intruders of 
the West, and a believer in the fate and the future power of the 
Asiatic races. On the other hand little Japan well knew that 
the day might shortly come when the great Russian Bear* 
would strike down her own life with his mighty paw; and she 

*"It was largely the cumulative effect of repeated acts of Russian ag- 
gression that led to the present war. Not for any one of half a dozen of 
Russia's acts would Japan have gone to war. But she remembered them all, 
and treasured them up, adding each new one to the sum of its predecessors, 
until the grand total strained her forbearance to the breaking point." — From 
a New York Editorial. 



17 

determined to strike him first. In this plucky act she had the 
sympathy of the American people. 

It is curious to note how the rights and wrongs of this 
whole war have been argued, and how a stand is taken for or 
against one or the other party not on the basis of a calm con- 
sideration of the facts, but with the facts obscured either by 
sentiment, or by self-interest. This enlightened, philosophic, 
far advanced twentieth century world betrays an illogical and 
sentimental outlook, where self-interest is far enough away not 
to push in as a controlling factor. Neither France, Germany, 
England, nor America, has regarded this affair in a judicial man- 
ner. With all his civilization and education, the old Adam is 
still deeper and more potent than abstract reason, and moves 
the world to-day. 

The war began with great reverses for Russia, including 
the death of vice-admiral Makaroff, and of the celebrated Rus- 
sian painter Verestchagin. 

On May ist, the Japanese crossed the Yalu. On May 5th 
they cut off Port Arthur from the mainland and blocked the 
harbor. In June, General Oku defeated General Stakelberg, 
and Kuropatkin began to retreat northward, drawing the Japan- 
ese after him. The third week in July Russian cruisers held 
up English and German merchantmen in the Red Sea, and 
Great Britain despatched war vessels to Alexandria. Interest- 
ing questions of the right of search and seizure, in which the 
United States has taken a stand against England for a cen- 
tury at once arose. 

On the second week of August the Czar's squadron in the 
far East, including six battleships, four cruisers and a small 
flotilla of destroyers emerged from Port Arthur and were scat- 
tered and destroyed. Early in September the Russians were 
defeated in the terrible battle of Liao-Yang. This appears to 
have been one of the great battles of the world, nearly four 
hundred thousand men being engaged. Kuropatkin retreated 
from his main position.* 

*Manchuria, the seat of the war, is said to be a very fertile country, but 
only one-fifth of it is under cultivation. The most valuable trade product 
is beans, though, owing to a lack of railway facilities, it ie impossible, to sow, 
reap and export them the same year. The Russian railways are well run, 



In September, some revulsion of feeling against the 
Japanese began to manifest itself in America. The fact 
pointed out by us long ago, but disputed, viz : that the Japa- 
nese is fighting, not as a Christian, but as an ancestor-wor- 
shipper, who regards himself as a link in a long chain of hu- 
manity, who is brave because he has no Christian valuation of 
life, is turning out to be an actual matter of experience.* 

All the. war correspondents of Europe and America have 
become disillusionized as to Japanese character. The total 
disregard of truth and of agreements made, by the Japanese, 
their offensive vanity and insolence in consequence of their 
victories, have drawn attention to the latent barbarism in 
their make-up. 

In September America was given a shock by the appear- 
ance of Russian war vessels on the Pacific Coast. Later the 
Baltic fleet started for the East, and the Czar announced that 
he would send a new army of three hundred thousand men to 
Manchuria. (The possibility of his doing this has been dis- 
puted.) The officials at St. Petersburg expressed themselves 



but the rails are light. The Chinese have stipulated that in laying down the 
track, cemeteries, villages and towns must be avoided! Standards of educa- 
tion are not as high as in China. Brigandage is frequent. Opium is smug- 
gled into China. Millet is raised in large quantities and from it the national 
drink is distilled. Dogs are raised on farms for their skins and for their 
flesh. Tigers are hunted for their skins and for their bones. The Russian 
soldier is everywhere in evidence, and in dealing with the Chinese is said to 
be generous and social. See "Manchuria: Its People, Resources and Recent 
History." By Alexander Hosie. With map and thirty illustrations from 
photographs. 8 vo. pp. XII, 293. New York. Scribner. 

*A Russian writer last spring drew attention to the strange fact that 
there are no less than 30,000 Japanese who have, been converted to Chris- 
tianity in Japan by Greek Catholic missionaries and that the number of con- 
versions has been increasing est the rate of a 1,000 a year. These Greek Cath- 
olics asked the Bishop Nicholas as to whether they ought fight their spirit- 
ual benefactors. They were told that 'Christianity taught obedience to the 
Emperor and lawful authorities and that they should pray for peace while 
responding to the call of duty.' This writer, like many others who know 
the situation, says that the educated Japanese, are unfortunately tending 
more towards agnosticism, and even atheism, than toward Chfistianity. 
He quotes Marquis Ito, "the real ruler of Japan," as saying: "I look upon 
religion as a thing wholly unnecessary to the life of a people. Science is 
better than superstition, and what is religion — Christian or Buddhist — but 
merely credulity and blind faith. And is not superstition necessarily a 
source of weakness? I do not deplore, the fact that rationalism is becoming 
widespread in Japan, for I do not regard it as a danger to society." 

But, continues the writer, the mass of the Japanese are still in the lowest 
stage of heathen superstition. They have tens of thousands of Buddhist and 
Shintoist temples and believe in all kinds of gods, the principal ones being 
the god of fire, the god of war, and the god of earthquakes, who does not 
even spare the churches. 



19 

on President Roosevelt's proposition of a "Peace Confer- 
ence," regarding it "as not exactly opportune." Russia would 
be unwilling to be a party to a Conference in which the neu- 
trals would have a preponderance, and could restrict the 
belligerents. One of her papers, the Novosti, of St. Peters- 
burg, declares that international law is a polite myth which 
is continually violated when it suits the convenience of some 
strong nation to do it. This is not the. exact truth. Interna- 
tional law is, indeed, a very vague science, yet many of its 
important principles are obeyed by civilized powers to their 
own inconvenience, as our own country proved, in her war 
with Spain. Startling as it may seem, time of war is an ex- 
ceedingly good time for the meeting of a peace Congress. 
The realities of the situation are all the more potent, and if 
there were a clear understanding that nations of war would not 
be called on to compromise their independent position, or 
have their conduct in a contemporary war placed under criti- 
cism, they might be able to attend it with advantage to them - 
selves and to the world. Although the call at the present 
moment may seem a trifle too suggestive, yet it is even more 
ridiculous to wait until universal peace has come before trying 
to hold a peace conference. 

On Oct. 6th Kuropatkin's army left Mukden and at- 
tacked the Japanese, fighting for three days, but was hurled 
back in disorder on Wednesday by the Japanese driving a 
wedge into the. middle of his line. Nevertheless Kuropatkin 
made such a stubborn stand that the Japanese did not benefit 
by their victory. 

On midnight, October 21st, the Baltic fleet committed a 
terrible mistake, by firing at British fishing vessels in the 
North Sea, killing several fishermen and wounding many 
others. The bombardment continued for nearly a half hour, 
and then the fleet steamed away without any offer of help. 
England was aroused, and there was a strong sentiment to 
prevent the Baltic fleet going through the strait of Gibraltar, 
but the matter was settled by a promise of arbitration. 

At the present writing the likelihood is that the Russian 
and the Japanese armies will be obliged to go into winter 



20 

quarters with the decisive battle untaught. Meantime Port 
Arthur, contrary to every prediction, at this writing, Decem- 
ber 17, continues to hold out, and Gen. Stoessel is the hero 
of the war. 

EVEN though Russia had not been involved in a war with 
Japan, the year 1904 would have been a momentous one 
to her. Her internal situation has some very serious 
elements in it. Great changes have taken place in the empire 
within the last twelve months, and more may still be expected. 
It is supposed that the Russian financial situation is worse than 
appears on the face. Although her recent minister of finance, 
M. Witte, has made vast expenditures for internal improve- 
ment, his wisdom is open to question. Defeat for Russia in 
this war might involve her in financial perils without limit. 

It is true, that Russia is enormously rich, far more so than 
Japan, and that the Russian budget each year shows a hand- 
some surplus. No other European country has so great a 
budget or so great a surplus. It is also held that the agri- 
cultural resources of Russia are marvelous. But, if we ex- 
cept the rich fields of Finland and Poland, such is not the case 
in European Russia. The soil is usually not rich, and is not 
well tilled. Our readers will be surprised to learn that Russia 
proper produces only about one-fourth as much wheat as 
Great Britain, one-third as much as Germany and Sweden, 
and one-half as much as Hungary. Twenty-two per cent, of 
seed must be used for her crop, while in America less than 
six per cent, is used. Her grain yield has been decreasing for 
40 years and is thirty-five per cent, less than it was then. Her 
exports of grain are large because her people at home, where 
there is chronic danger of famine, do not receive enough to 
eat. Sixty years ago Russia had no debt, but no other nation 
in the world has increased its national indebtedness so greatly 
as Russia did between 1885 and 1902. The increase was 133 
per cent. 

In the ten years following 1889, in a time of peace, the 
increase in the admitted bonded indebtedness of the national 
government was eight hundred millions of dollars. In 1900, 



21 

the admitted bonded indebtedness was over three billions of 
dollars, and on top of this, the government had guaranteed 
interest, etc., on railroad securities to the extent of nearly 
seven hundred millions of dollars; and had guaranteed the 
mortgage bonds of land credit institutions to the extent of 
three hundred and thirty-five millions of dollars, so that in all, 
the government was responsible for four billion and a quar- 
ter of dollars. During the last two years there have been im- 
mense defaults to the land bank companies, and these have 
been unable to meet their obligations. It is true that vast 
amounts of land, belonging to the nobility, have been fore- 
closed during the last few years, but these lands could not be 
sold for more than a mere fraction of the face of the mort- 
gages. 

It may not be generally known that the external debt of 
Russia is still held abroad, while the internal debt was placed 
in Russia. About three hundred millions went originally to 
the nobility as indemnity for amounts taken at the liberation 
of the serfs. During the last ten years, hundreds of millions 
of dollars of foreign capital has been invested in Russian in- 
dustries, and besides this, much foreign banking capital has 
been attracted into the country. The fact is that Russia cannot 
have a fixed interest charge of much less than one hundred and 
thirty-five millions of dollars per year. The government has 
continued to offer large amounts of new loans abroad, and 
while M. Witte would not admit that he was selling bonds to 
pay his interest, he did acknowledge that he was obliged to 
do so to prevent gold exports, which is much the same, thing. 

Other internal conditions in Russia are equally gloomy. 
Imperial lands may be counted as an offset to the existing 
debt, governor ownership has been making the people poorer, 
and the taxation has been vastly increasing as a result of M. 
Witte's policy of expansion. M. de Witte has himself said, 
"The population is weighed down by direct and indirect tax- 
ation to the uttermost that can be borne." The money lender 
absorbs nearly all the profits of agriculture. The already de- 
scribed agricultural conditions are growing worse. Russian 
railway stock is heavily overcapitalized, the allowances for 



22 

depreciation are not sufficient ; and, worst of all, some au- 
thorities maintain that about three-fourths of the cost of rail- 
wa)rs has been caused by plundering the. government. It is 
said, loosely speaking, that nine-tenths of the people are ex- 
isting for the profit of the other tenth. No contract is let in 
Russia, which does not allow a liberal margin for a "rake-off," 
and, in the case of railroads, this means that they have been 
paid for two and a half times over, and that the standard 
value is fifty per cent, higher than the necessary cost. And 
these railroads are more and more unprofitable. In 1896 the 
profits of the state railroads were over five millions of dollars. 
In 1899 they had declined to a little more than half a million. 
In 1900 they were transformed into a loss of one million three 
hundred thousand dollars. In 1902 this loss increased to 
twenty-two and a half million dollars. 

It is stated, on what authority we do not know, that fully 
seventy-five per cent, of the. Red Cross fund, which was sub- 
scribed at home and abroad, has been stolen, and that the 
magnificent hospital train which the Czarina sent to the East, 
was "looted" between St. Petersburg and Moscow. It is said 
that admirals, buying coal in foreign ports, procure re- 
ceipts for much larger sums than they have paid, pocketing 
the difference and dividing it with their under officers. De- 
partment officers have been multiplied until the statement is 
made seriously that there are as many clerks on the pay roll 
of the office issuing licenses for dogs, as there are dogs in 
St. Petersburg. 

Of all plunderers, the grand dukes, consisting of three 
uncles and a brother-in-law of the Czar, are said to be the 
worst. The three of them are trustees of a fund to erect a 
memorial church to Alexander the Second. The money has 
been subscribed several times over by the nation, and work 
was begun twenty-two years ago. Nobody expects that it 
will be completed in this generation, and yet the embezzling 
trustees are sons of the murdered Czar. 

When the progressive M. Witte was appointed minister 
of finance in opposition to the bureaucracy, he undertook to 
put the public works on a sound commercial basis. In trying 



23 

to make, the tran-Siberian railway a commercial road, he an- 
tagonized Alexieff, who regarded it partly as a means for 
making war on China and Japan and partly as an opportunity 
for private speculation. The result was that M. Witte was 
obliged to retire. It was no other than the hatred Plehve 
who brought on Witte's downfall. Although the reforms 
and industrial policy had made Witte many enemies, he was 
successful, until the new minister of the interior, Plehve, re- 
ceived his appointment. From that time on there was open 
warfare between the two men. Plehve put an end to Witte's 
local agricultural commission, and took from him the admin- 
istration of the commercial marine. 

Before long factory inspectors were made subordinate to 
Plehve's police, department. A little later Witte was driven 
from his office, and the empire was dragged into a foreign 
war. 

The party headed by Plehve, Pobiedonostzeff, Alexiefif 

and Kuropatkin felt that war would win glory abroad and 

allay disaffection at home. It has done neither, and has left 

the reactionary party in disgrace. Russia has been compared 

to the 

. . . weary Titan, with deaf 
Ears, and labor- dimmed eyes, 

StaggeriDg on to her goal, 
Bearing on shoulders immense, 
Atlantean, the load 
Well nigh not to he borne, 
Of the too vast orb of her fate. 

The leaders of the reactionary faction have been Alexieff, 
Plehve. and Pobiedonostzeff, chief procurator of the Holy 
Synod, and chief administrator of the secret and inquisitorial 
methods by which anything like a free expression of public 
opinion, has been made impossible in Russia. It has been 
said that the bureaucracy, with its despotism, has itself felt the 
coming of a crisis, and that "after us the deluge," is the feel- 
ing of the Russian nobility. The finances, famines and re- 
pressive measures taken to stamp out revolution, have long 
been felt to be inviting it. 

Retribution came to Russia swift and awful. Bobrikoff, 



24 

Governor of Finland, was shot on June 15; Andreieff, deputy 
governor of Transcaucasia, was assassinated on July 17th; 
and eleven days later, the bomb struck the Czar's most power- 
ful minister, at the head of the bureau of the interior, the 
hated minister of police, Konstantinovitch Von Plehve. Von 
Plehve has been termed the evil genius of his country. It 
was he who ordered the horrible massacre and plunder at 
Kishieneflf, and he carried out the Russian policy in Finland. 
With Pobiedonostzeff and Alexieff. he was at the head of all 
Russian recent acts of despotism and of the reign of terror in 
the land. With his death, the policy of reaction lost its chief 
bulwark. 

It is worth while to spend some time to take a view of 
this ''blood-hound of the Czar," this most hated man in all the 
Russias. Of Polish extraction, he combined with German 
thoroughness, and Muscovite ferocity, a truly Oriental as- 
tuteness and cunning. He was born in 1848 and sought to re- 
trieve his family's name as soon as he was able to serve the 
state. A Polish noble gave him the means of obtaining an 
education, and then he went to Moscow and began the study 
of law. He soon attracted the attention of state officials be- 
cause of the. fierceness with which he fought for his clients. 
He was chosen as the procurator of Vladimir, and the vigor 
with which he ran down criminals caused him to be spoken of 
at the Russian capital. Later he was transferred to Warsaw, 
and here he prosecuted the very family that had given him 
the means for his education. It was his special duty to ferret 
out cases of treason, and this, bringing him to the attention 
of the Czar, Alexander II, lifted him to St. Petersburg and 
caused him to be made procurator of the courts at the Rus- 
sian capital. The Czar made it the special duty of Plehve to 
stamp out Nihilism, and the procurator searched incessantly 
for those whom he believed to be guilty of treason. When 
the attempt was made to blow up the. Winter Palace, he had 
many persons arrested, and some even tortured. When, on 
March 13, 1881, the Czar was assassinated, Plehve took 
charge of the prosecution in person and asked that he him- 
self be made director of the police department. From that 



25 

lime on his power increased until he became the greatest sub- 
ject of the Czar. When he learned that his own life was 
threatened, he redoubled his efforts to stamp out Liberalism 
and inaugurated a reign of terror. Many educated and pros- 
perous citizens were sent to Siberia or to the prisons. From 
1881 to 1884, as the chief of state, police, he dictated the policy 
of the empire. He banished German colonists in Russia, and 
the Jews. In 1884 he was made Minister of the Interior. One 
of his first posts under Nicholas II was secretary of State for 
Finland, and he went about the task of russianizing it so 
cruelly that in the early part of 1903 the Czar recalled him 
and put him in charge of affairs at home. It was the massacre 
of Kishieneff that brought him to the attention of the whole 
world. He is believed to have had a full knowledge of the 
affair, and, in September, 1903, issued a secret circular to the 
provincial authorities practically putting a ban on all Jewish 
activities. His last great public work was the drafting of the 
scheme for peasant reform which was ordered by the Em- 
peror. For Plehve was obedient to the Czar. Whereas M. 
Witte was often blunt and uncompromising and hurt the 
Czar's feelings, Plehve studied his master's peculiarities, and, 
by subserviency and flattery, became the first Minister in the 
Empire. He seems to have had no policy of his own, but 
sounded the Czar as to the latter's feelings, and then shaped 
the national policy in accordance with them. He is said to 
have instilled distrust into the nature of Nicholas and to have 
stimulated his master's growing love of absolutism (with him- 
self as the only prop.) Love of power seems to have been the 
determining factor in his whole career. In the later part 
of his life he saw in all persons conspirators against himself, 
and the habit of hunting down these conspirators became his 
second nature. He knew that he was carrying his life in his 
hands, but felt sure that it was well protected. He made his 
great mistake in putting his trust in spies and police and ar- 
moured carriages, and in dismissing Nihilists with contempt. 
"They do not count," he said. "We know every one of them, 
and everything that they are doing." 

No wonder that, when Plehve fell at the hand of a nihilist, 



26 

it was a grave question with the Czar as to who should be- 
come his successor, and be elevated to the Ministry of the In- 
terior. There was General von Wahl, who puts an end to 
strikes by flogging the bare-backed strikers in droves. There 
was General Kleigels, who checks Western ideas in the minds 
of University students with cossack whips. And there was 
Obolensky, governor general of Finland, who is said to re- 
gard the practice of flogging women as the best antidote to 
revolutionary poison. It is stated that eight Russian states- 
men were offered the Ministry of the Interior, one after the. 
other, and all declined. 

The surprise of the whole world was exceedingly great, 
therefore, when prince Svialopolk-Mirsky was appointed to the 
position. A broad liberal, he is the very opposite of his prede- 
cessor. While he opposes parliamentary systems, he believes 
in giving the local centres of government fuller power to deal 
with their affairs. He does not believe in using force with 
students. "The young people, must be shown the truth, and 
also the absurdity of their longings." He favors rural 
schools, he favors religious liberty "as much as possible." 
To him is ascribed a highly developed sense of justice and it 
is thought that he may be relied on to strive to administer his 
department with moderation and prudence. He started out 
early in October in his great work, attempting to pacify the 
discontented portion of the Russian Empire. He is de- 
pendent directly upon the Czar for his power. 

We must here intercept our tale of the administration of 
Mirsky for a few moments, and look back to Finland, that 
fair and lovely daughter of the Lutheran Baltic, for whom, in 
her persecution and humiliation, the prayers of our church 
have been rising - even here in the distant west. 

THE policy of Plehve and Pobiedonostzeff in Poland, among 
the Semites, the Armenians, the Nihilist, of the em- 
pire, and the Germans of the Baltic provinces was 
pressed even into peaceful and loyal Finland. Her "russifica- 
tion" was determined on. 

In the autumn of 1902 a series of ordinances were pro- 



27 

mulgated which ruthlessly swept away the liberties and privi- 
leges of the Finlanders and visited the most perfect and en- 
lightened province in Russia with darkness and ruin. The 
Finnish Diet was deprived of effective power of legislation : 
the Finnish official positions were filled by Russians : Finnish 
judges were dismissed. Any public servant could be retired 
without the right of appeal. The most painful ordinance was 
the denial of any appeal whatever to the courts for private 
citizens. The Czar is said to have decorated constables for 
actions which the Finnish Courts pronounced crimes. 

The formal abrogation of Finland's constitution was im- 
mediately followed by a number of deportations. Relentlessly 
was the tyrannical system extended against all the best and 
most loyal men of the country, ex-senators, merchants, land- 
owners, peasant farmers, school masters, pastors and bergo- 
masters. Thus it has gone on for many months. 

But matters came to a head in the middle of last June, 
General Bobrikoff, the relentless russifier and governor gen- 
eral of Finland, was shot and killed at Helsingfors by a young 
Finn, and not only in Finland but throughout Russia new en- 
couragement was given to the revolutionists. Thus did the 
holy policy of the narrow-minded Pobiedonostzeff bring on a 
crisis, among the people who were most loyal* to the Rus- 
sians. 

As an answer to this assassination in Finland the Russian 
bureaucracy appointed prince Obolensky the new governor 
general of Finland in July. Obolensky is reported to be one 
of the most cruel and ruthless administrators in Russia. He 
has suppressed students' riots and agrarian movements. He 
has turned peasants into beggars, and had them beaten by 
cossacks. In 1902 an attempt was made to assassinate him. 
His first act in Finland was to suppress several newspapers, 
and he has standing orders from St. Petersburg, "to 
strengthen in the minds of the Finnish people the conviction 
that their destinies are indissolubly bound up with Russia." 



♦When Russia had to confront the united forces of England, France and 
Piedmont, Nicholas I chose hie loyal Finnish regiments as the ones to be 
trusted in the protection of his capital St. Petersburg. 



28 

Later this fall, in October, or in the beginning of No- 
vember, Russia took the extreme step of asking Sweden to 
refuse right of asylum to Finns, and requested Sweden to 
grant officials from St. Petersburg the right to make a house 
to house search in Sweden for Finnish refugees. It appears 
that Russia desires prominent Finns now residing in Stockholm 
to be surrendered to agents of the St. Petersburg police. The 
Russians base their claim upon the international agreement 
that anarchists are to be surrendered upon demand, and they 
take the view that the assassination of Bobrikoff was inspired 
by a Finnish group operating from Sweden. Finns and 
Swedes are united by common bonds of language, traditions 
and institutions, as well as by religion, and this last step of 
Russia has greatly incensed Scandinavia. And in this Scandi- 
navian feeling America joins. Andrew D. White, the ex- 
American minister to St. Petersburg, declares that to his 
mind the destruction of the liberties of Finland has been the 
most wicked thing in the history of the last two centuries. 
He says, "It has turned the best, the most civilized, the most: 
educated, and the most loyal province in the empire into a 
land in which the opposite of all these characteristics is more 
highly developed than in any other part of the empire." 

BUT let us return to Russia herself. What prince Mirsky 
has accomplished for the relief of Russia within six or 
eight weeks seems almost fabulous. The press of 
Russia seems to have received notice that to form and ex- 
press an opinion on public affairs was no longer a crime. 
Mirsky has appealed for a policy of mutual confidence be- 
tween government and people. He has restored to the pro- 
vincial assembly its ancient liberty of deliberation and ex- 
pression, and has called a council of the presidents of the pro- 
vincial assemblies to deliberate concerning the condition of 
Russia. It is the first authorized assembling of these officials 
from all over Russia. The Council is of a private character 
and discusses three things : I. The widening of the provincial 
activity of the assembly. 2. The organization of a central 



2 9 

administration of agriculture. 3. The co-operation of local 
provincial hospitals in the case of wounded people. 

In Finland, with which it was supposed that Mirsky could 
have nothing to do, the Russian policy has been greatly 
ameliorated, and astonishing to say, the Finnish National 
Diet has been called to meet this month and assurances have 
been given, for the first time, in the history of Russia, that it 
will meet again in five years. About the middle of November 
prominent Finlanders who were exiled by Plehve received 
permission to return home. The oppressive activity of the 
police has been relaxed. Banishment by administration 
order has been abolished. Hundreds of prisoners exiled to 
Siberia have been recalled. The Jews have received assur- 
ances of the dawning of a brighter day. Students' demonstra- 
tions are not suppressed by military power, and a part of the 
censorship has been removed from the Russian papers. 

It was the 31st of last August, when Finland was stirred 
with joy by the definite announcement that the Finnish As- 
sembly would be convened on the 6th of December. There 
had been great fear that this convention would be suppressed, 
and though the program to be taken up is not adequate, the 
simple fact that the four orders, in which the whole tradition 
of the Finns is bound up, are again to be called together, to- 
gether with the new and gracious manifesto of the Czar, pro- 
duced a profound impression. The decree of the Czar not 
only includes a meeting for this year, but also preparations 
for an assembly in three years to come, by which the consti- 
tutional provision of Finland, that the Assembly shall meet 
in periods of not less than five years, will have been fulfilled for 
the first time since the country has been under Russian 
sovereignty. It is felt that the step perhaps pointed to some 
cessation of continuous Russianization, which was carried on 
so steadily by Plehve. It certainly looks as though the 
prayers which were offered a year ago in many parts of the 
American Church for the relief of Finland were now in pro- 
cess of being fulfilled. 

Naturally a tremendous liberal rebound has occurred and 
hopes have been raised which cannot expect fulfillment, and 



30 

which may again bring on reaction. The bureaucracy has 
raised a storm of opposition against the new minister, and are 
using every possible weapon to undermine him. They have 
done their best to postpone the meeting of the. presidents of 
the provincial assembly and M. Pobiedonostzeff has warned 
the emperor that autocracy and orthodoxy will both probably 
be in danger if the present movement is not stopped promptly. 

AN illustration of the manner in which Russia has been 
dealing with her provinces, may be found in the rob- 
bery of the Armenian church, which took place in 1898. 
The Russian governor of the Caucasus made, propositions to 
his nation concerning the confiscation of the property of the 
Armenian church, naturally without the knowledge of the 
Catholikos of the said church. A commission, and subse- 
quently the Russian government itself, under Prince Nikola 
really advised against this project. But the governor 
general hated Armenia violently, and now turned to Plehve, 
who also declined to act in the. matter. From Plehve he turn- 
ed to the Czar, picturing the Armenians as revolutionaries 
and declaring that they were using the property of the church 
for revolutionary purposes. Minister Witte opposed any 
confiscation, but nevertheless, on June 12, 1903, the Czar ap- 
proved it. 

When this Russian intention became known in Armenia, 
broadsides were immediately published, threatening every 
clergyman with death who turned over the property or goods 
of the Armenian church into the Russian hands. Finally the 
procurator of the Synod of Edschmiatsim appeared before the. 
Catholikos with the imperial decree of Russia and gave him 
seven days to sign it. The latter replied that he was astonish- 
ed at this attack of Russia upon the rights of the church, and 
needed time to think. 

Four days later the procurator came again and reminded 
him of the imperial decree. The Catholikos showed him the 
door. Meantime he had called the bishops and arch-bishops 
and officials of the Armenian church together. They ranged 
themselves on the side of the Armenian people, and advised 



3i 

the Catholikos not to sign the decree, and he did not. If the 
Russian government should persist, it was resolved that all 
the ecclesiastical officials from the Catholikos down should 
lay down their office. 

This conclusion was telegraphed to the governor of Cau- 
casia, and, at the same time, a telegram was sent to Von Plehve, 
asking for time for consideration. However, the delivery of 
the property had already begun. One of the Armenian cus- 
todians had turned over part of it, and a million marks, which 
had been deposited in the Russian bank, were absorbed by the 
government. The Catholikos protested that no one dare de- 
liver the property of the church without his consent, and he de- 
posed the offending official and sent him into a monastery for 
punishment. A telegram was sent to the Czar, asking him 
for mercy, but through Von Plehve, reply came that the de- 
crees were to be fulfilled, and if they were not, responsibility 
would fall upon the patriarchs. Meantime, the excitement 
was growing among the people. The custodians of church 
property were threatened with death if they gave it over. The 
patriarch of Constantinople telegraphed to the Catholikos that 
he had no right to hand over the Armenian church funds to 
the Russian government, that the same was the property of the 
whole Armenian nation and that many foundations belonging 
to non- Russian Armenians were included therein. 

On these, funds, which run up to about five hundred mil- 
lion of marks, the Armenian schools are supported, together 
with four seminaries and a number of high schools, and many 
institutions of mercy. 

The former minister of the interior had delivered the ulti- 
matum to the head of the Armenian church that if the funds 
were not handed over voluntarily the ministry would have to 
answer the question whether the Armenian church could con- 
tinue to exist on Russian territory. 

In sharp contrast with this act of Russia, Damianos of 
Jerusalem has loaned Alexieff a golden cross, which contains 
"a genuine piece of the Cross on which Christ was crucified." 
In the letter accompanying the gift the Patriarch says, "Nam- 
ing you as a knight of the Holy Grave of the Lord, from which 



32 

Christianity has originated, we give you in this golden cross a 
genuine piece of the Holy life-bringing wood, upon which the 
God-man and Redeemer has recognized us as the recipients 
of his endless blessings. And so may this Holy gift be a power 
of strength to you in the Holy duties that you are pursuing. 
Given in the Holy city of Jerusalem, March 15, 1904." 

THE centre of all Russian ferment is the Czar. Many 
are the opinions with regard to him. Under misrepre- 
sentation of his advisers, he has more than once been a 
severe oppressor, yet the world seems to be conscious of his 
kindly, humane and liberal intentions. His deeds have spoken 
for him. On the 10th of March, 1893, he issued the Ukase 
decreeing religious power and freedom of creed and worship 
throughout the dominions. This decree put an end to flog- 
ging and to Siberian exile, and subsequent decrees removed 
many of the most objectionable restrictions imposed upon his 
subjects. It was he also who organized the Hague Peace Con- 
ference in the face of the opposition of his counsellors. Nicholas 
is in many respects a noble ruler. He contents himself with 
the military rank of colonel, which he bore before he became 
the Czar. He is conscientious, deeply religious, and entirely 
free from the vices that contaminate royalty. He is wrapped 
up in his wife and children, and contrary to the popular belief 
takes an active part in the guidance of domestic and foreign 
affairs. He is opposed to the intervention of outside powers 
in his conflict with Japan. In order not to give any pretext 
for interference, he has kept over eighty ships shut up in the 
Black Sea and is debarred from their use. Although three 
ministers and other dignitaries have been murdered and many 
unsuccessful attempts at assassinations have been made, no 
attack has, as yet, been made upon the life of Nicholas since 
his accession to the crown. This could not be said of either 
of his predecessors. 

He has exonerated the Finns of blame for the assassina- 
tion of their tyrannical governor. On the recent occasion of 
the birth of his heir to the throne, he issued a manifesto which, 
the other day (December 14th), when the assassins of Plehve 



33 

were on trial, cut down their term of imprisonment materially. 
Sasoneff's sentence was penal servitude for life, and the Czar's 
manifesto reduced it to fourteen years. 

But there is another side to the picture. It seems to be 
almost beyond doubt that the Czar is arbitrary, perhaps filled 
with the spirit of vanity, or, perhaps it might be better to say, 
self-exaltation. As the peacemaker of mankind and the torch 
bearer of civilization among the Asiatic races, he has taken a 
high view of his mission here upon earth, but, at the same time, 
under the influence of officials who have known how to flatter 
him, the impoverishment of his subjects, the continuation of a 
course of tyranny, the undermining of legal forms, and the 
plunging of his nation into a great war, are parts of his respon- 
sibility. His point of view may be seen from the fact that in 
the rescript appointing the successor to Obolensky, the tyran- 
nical governor of Finland, the Czar eulogizes and commends 
him for his work of the russification of Finland, hopes that it 
will be continued, and believes that the only chance for the 
welfare of the Finns is in its ultimate success! 

The most recent information (December 22) pictures the 
Czar as greatly out of humor at the Zemstov members for 
asking for constitutional government. He has practically told 
them to go home and mind their own business. Nevertheless 
the Moscow town council on December 15 advocated popular 
control of the government, only to be officially rebuked by the 
governor of Moscow, and to be asked by Mirsky why it dis- 
cusses questions outside of its province. Meantime many of 
the members of the Zemstov are joining the "league of con- 
stitutional democracy" which in turn is in touch with the revo- 
lutionaries. Yet captain Clado, the Russian advocate at Paris, 
represents the Czar as desiring to give Russia a constitution. 
The situation is tense. 

NICHOLAS exercises rule over one hundred and thirty 
millions of persons. But it must also be remembered 
that he claims spiritual jurisdiction as the head of the 
millions more in the orthodox Greek Catholic church. In this 
respect, he resembles Pope Pius the Tenth, who on the 9th 



34 

• >f last August celebrated the first anniversary of the beginning 
of his reign, and whose ecclesiastical sway extends over two 
hundred millions of persons. Both the Czar and Pope are 
now in the midst of a grave crisis. We turn from the affairs 
that surround the head of the Greek church to those en- 
compassing the Roman Pontiff. 



THE year 1004 in Roman Catholic circles will ever be fa- 
mous For the determined effort of the Pope to reform the 
often very flippant music of the Roman Church, and, in 
most elaborate manner, to introduce the old Gregorian Church 
music, to the entire exclusion of every other mode. As the 
subject is a large one, and very instructive, we shall not attempt 
to deal with it in this survey, but hope at some future time to 
present an article on the subject. 

A few weeks ago, on the 8th of December, we believe, it 
was fifty years since the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 
declaring the Virgin birth of Alary the Mother of Jesus, was 
promulgated by the Pope. One would not suppose, with the 
advance of modern ideas, that a dogma of this kind would be 
recognized with enthusiasm throughout the world, but the fact 
is that, beginning with the Sunday preceding the date, immense 
throngs, in some instances, the whole Roman population of a 
city, attended the churches. In Philadelphia, for instance, it 
is estimated that more than 60,000 crowded into the Cathedral 
on the last Sunday afternoon, for performing the devotions of 
the Jubilee, which included three visits to the Cathedral, where 
piayers had to be offered for Pope Pius X. 

Another instance of loyalty to the Pope, striking because 
of its mediaeval character, was the penance imposed by him 
upon Prince Frederick of Schonberg-Waldenburg and his di- 
vorced wife, the Princess Alice of Bourbon. These two fash- 
ionable devotees of Paris and French watering places humbly 
started oi'i, last September, to Rome on a pilgrimage, which 
was a condition to the reconciliation between the two brought 
about by the efforts of his Holiness. They traveled in simple 



35 

garb, the prince shod with sandals, and stopped at very insig- 
nificant hotels on the road. Even during wet weather they 
went on their journey, as it must be made without a break. 
The princess took with her only three books, the Holy Bible, 
the "Narrative of Jane Shore," who atoned for her sins by 
walking through the streets of London, garbed in a winding 
sheet and holding a lighted taper in her hand; and a guide 
book with a map of the country. It is intimated thai these 
ijuiet hours on the road to Rome were regarded by the princess 
as the calmest and most peaceful in her otherwise stormy mar- 
ried life. If the Pope were aide to impose similar penances 
upon the divorced persons in America, hotel and inn keepers 
throughout the land might rise up to call him blessed ; and the 
country itself might be saved from great impending harm. 

On the nth of last March Pius the X issued an encyclical 
on the occasion of the anniversary of Gregory the Great. Af- 
ter eulogizing Gregory he compares the present conditions of 
the church with the church of those days. "Making a survey 
from the height of the Vatican, we find that we have as much 
or more to fear than Gregory the Great. Tempests threaten 
on every hand, the well arranged houses of our enemies 
threaten us on every side. We are deserted, and without the 
human instrumentalities to fight the enemy or to repel the 
storm." It is modern science particularly that threaten : 
"Every supernatural dispensation is denied, and on that ac- 
count the possibility of the miracle. Even the proofs that set 
forth the existence of a God are contested. From this rlenial 
of the supernatural the postulate of a false historic criticism 
arises. The dogmas of faith are simply erased from the pages 
of history without any further historical examination." Sine 
science has adopted this false method, there is no law anymore 
to prevent critics from destroying everything that does not suit 
them in Holy Scriptures, or that contradicts the theses they de- 
sire to prove. If a supernatural dispensation is defender], the 
sources of ecclesiastical history are built up on an entirely 
different foundation, and the writers of these sources are made 
to say what the critics desire, and not what the writers intend." 
Hence the Pope asks his bishops to emphasize the supernatural 



36 

alike before peasant and learned man. Following the example 
of Gregory, the education and choice of the clergy and of 
bishops is to become a matter of particular care. 



THE poor Pope has gotten into difficulties with the French 
Republic which are more serious in character, and per- 
haps in result, than any that have occurred to the Papal 
See since the day of the liberation of Italy, and of the success- 
ful establishment of relationship with the German empire. 

Although the French Republic has recently become more 
and more antagonistic to the Roman clergy and the established 
Church, yet the actual rupture which occurred between the 
Third Republic and the Vatican is the result of a specific act 
that took place four years ago. On January 26, 1900, Pope 
Leo XIII saw fit to "invite" Bishop Geay of Levalle to resign 
bis office immediately. This Papal "invitation" was not is- 
sued in any spirit of sweet gentleness and peace characteristic 
of a Vicar of Christ upon earth, but was given, it was plainly 
said, "in order that more extreme steps might not be neces- 
sary." 

The resignation had been demanded because of certain 
facts "reported and unhappily proved beyond dispute, demon- 
strating it to be impossible for the Bishop to continue to exer- 
cise his functions with proper authority and efficacy." 

On February the 2d, the Bishop, after one week's reflec- 
tion, replied, unequivocally resigning his office. But a little 
later he withdrew the resignation, and made it conditional upon 
his being translated to another diocese. The Vatican would 
not agree to this condition because the circumstances which 
rendered Monsignor Geay to be Bishop of Levalle rendered 
him equally unfit for another diocese. 

For four years the whole matter continued at a deadlock. 
For, Pope Leo XIII, under the leadership of Cardinal Ram- 
polla, had set it down as a fundamental part of his policy to 
conciliate rather than oppose the French Republic ; and, how- 
ever firm the external position taken by the Vatican, it would 
not, under Rampolla, precipitate a crisis. 



37 

But now came a new and unexpected chapter in the history 
of the Papacy. Leo the XIII died. Cardinal Rampolla did 
not succeed Leo XIII as heir to the Papal throne. For Aus- 
tria, in the interests of the Triple Alliance, and in order to pre- 
vent the Rampolla policy of conciliation with France, had de- 
termined to defeat the Cardinal's candidacy. Rampolla zvas 
defeated and Austria won its great triumph in the election of 
Pius X. 

The significance of this triumph can hardly, even now, be 
estimated. The Vatican no longer beholds its chief menace in 
the Triple Alliance. The fundamental aim of its policy is no 
longer to punish Germany and especially Austria, for having 
entered into an alliance with Italy. Neither does it consider 
it to its interest to sacrifice the inner claims of the Roman 
Church for the sake of conciliating the anti-clerical Third Re- 
public of France. 

Instead of a good, broadminded-politician, like Rampolla, 
France now has to deal with a good narrow-minded Roman 
churchman. As the Paris Temps early predicted : 

"The intellectual horizon of Pius X, will be,, we fear, that of a good 
priest in the country or in a village, who reads his> Bible in the Vulgate — 
preferably in the extracts supplied for him in his breviary. He has given 
ub a melancholy proof of this in the condemnation of the, learned writings 
of the Abbe Loisy." 

The dictum of the Temps in this connection, by the way, 
is an amazing thing. It declares : "Nothing is more dangerous 
in a Pope than piety when it is not sufficiently assisted by a 
large and independent learning." And most astonishing of 
all is the following sentimental prophecy with which the Temps 
concludes its estimate of Pius : "Everything proclaims the fact 
that great Rome will serve as the mausoleum of mediaeval Ca- 
tholicism, as it served as the mausoleum of the Roman Empire. 
Every day, I fancy I hear amid the city's sad and solemn ruins 
the voice which cried aloud over the waters of the Grecian arch- 
ipelago, at the fall of paganism, 'Great Pan is dead!' " 

Think of the exquisite classic symbolism that must thus 
grate on Pius' narrow ears ! The Parisian idea of a good Pope 
is that of "Great Pan"! And it mourns the ideal papacy as 
dead. 



38 

And no wonder! For, when the tidings arrived that Pius 
X was elected, France knew it might expect no more indul- 
gent humoring on the part of the Vatican. 

The Vatican makes the point that there was no political 
motive in the summons to the Bishop, and that the resignation 
was requested entirely on personal, ecclesiastical and moral 
grounds. If we may legitimately infer that the authority 
which the Concordat gives to the French government over 
every ecclesiastical appointment is for the sake of the politi- 
cal integrity of France, and not for the purpose of enabling a 
civil government to meddle with questions of faith and morals. 
The point made by the Vatican is strong. The case of the 
Bishop of Levalle is not an isolated one. Perhaps as many 
as eight bishops have been told by the Vatican to repair to 
Rome, or resign, while the French government restrained them 
from doing either. There are in truth some dozen bishops, it 
is said, whose lives are not consistent with their faith. One of 
these has been suspected of membership in a lodge of free- 
masons,* while another is not sound on the doctrine of the 
divinity of Christ, and it is intimated that other bishops need 
investigation on grounds of concubinage and simony. Shall 
then the Pope, if he has no other concern than the best in- 

*To illustrate the nature of some of these troubles more clearly, let us 
give the following instance: On the 21st of February sixty-one Seminary 
students left the Dijon Seminary under the pretext that they did not feel 
prepared 10 receive the ordination which was to be given them by Bishop Le 
Nordez. The director of the Seminary had requested the bishop to postpone 
the ordination which was to take place at the end of February. The bishop 
came in person and was listened to respectfully by the students, but after he 
had gone was informed by the director that they were not yet convinced and 
the ordination would have to be postponed. At this the bishop summoned 
the young men to appear before him and said he was obliged to punish the 
leaders. The students withdrew in silence but all of them left the Seminary. 
Then the French Minister of War stepped in and ordered the Corps Com- 
mander to send all the students who had broken their vow into the army. 
This brought all the students back to the, Seminary on a double quick, and 
the bishop now had to ask the Minister of War to recall the order which 
would send them into the army. W T hen the Minister of War had assured 
himself that all the students had returned, he recalled the order!. The 
cause of the disturbance was said to have been that the bishop was a Free 
Mason. The proof of this consisted in the fact that the bishop occasionally 
visited the Rue. Cadet in Paris. Now there was a Masonic Temple in the 
Rue Cadet. Moreover on the bishop's coat-of-arms there are the three 
wheels of the arms of Bossuet. This looks very much like a Masonic em- 
blem. Still further the bishop's name is Albert and the letter A looks like a 
Masonic emblem. Worst of all the legend on the bishop'si coat-of-arms is: 
Pro templo et patria stantes. This is taken to be an admission that the 
bishop is for the Masonic Temple!" 



39 

terests of the church, allow himself to be turned aside from his 
duty by considerations relatingto French secular interests? "My 
duty," Pius has said, "is to give good bishops to France. Bet- 
ter no bishops at all than inadequate bishops." 

At the same time, it must be admitted, that by his persist- 
ent threat of deposition of bishops who have been (prudently) 
loyal to Gallic traditions and the republic, the Pope has been 
able to make effective practical reply to the scandalous (i.e. in 
Papal eyes) trip of President Loubet to Rome, to the expul- 
sion of the unauthorized religious orders, to the suppression 
of teaching by the religous orders, to the firm determination 
of M. Combes himself to choose without interference, from 
among the clergy of France, the bishops intended for Papal in- 
vestiture. 

No matter whether Premier or Pope be in the wrong, if 
through this test case, the Concordat should be dissolved, it 
will entirely alter the relation of the Church to the French Re- 
public, and the Roman Church may be obliged to become 
wholly dependent upon the voluntary contributions of the faith- 
ful members of the Church for its support. 

But there is a further development to record in this strik- 
ing political drama. Since the extreme step was at last 
taken, and diplomatic relations between Paris and the Vati- 
can have been severed, the Bishop of Levalle, curiously 
enough, obeyed the summons to Rome. He explains that now 
since the position of the Republic has been established, he is 
free to go to fhe Vatican! And the Pope is far from free to 
deal with the Bishop on his merits! It will be very interesting 
now to observe what effect the case will have upon the French 
government. Should he be convicted of offences against 
morals, the question will arise whether the French government 
will insist on maintaining that the Church is incompetent to 
enforce the moral law among its own priests without civil as- 
sent. 

No wonder the Pope, who must now act with a view to 
political policy, and not to the personal character of the 
Bishop, has declared that since this Bishop (so patriotic to 
France, and so loyal to Rome!) has gone to Rome, the Pope 



40 

will grant the original condition laid down by the bishop in 
his resignation, and will make him a bishop in good standing 
over some other diocese. Either the "facts proved beyond 
dispute" were, untrue, or else there is an ulterior reason suf- 
ficiently strong to move the Pope to alter his original position. 

All the bishops in France are interested in the vital ec- 
clesiastical question here raised. The Bishop of Quimper and 
Leon believes that while the complete separation of Church 
and state will mean a loss to the Church in numbers, it will 
become, a gain in faith, in spiritual strength and authority. 
Though there will be no state subsidy to fall back on, the con- 
tributions of the faithful will make up all deficiencies, and this 
Bishop feels .confident that if the Concordat should be abro- 
gated and what he terms "persecution" should become severe, 
he would be much better able to provide for his clergy than 
he can now. On the other hand the Bishop of Troves claim? 
that the separation would be "ruinous" both for the Church of 
France and for the country itsetf. For, he argues, even after 
the separation, the state would not leave the Church alone, 
but would continue to oppress and persecute it more than 
ever. But the Bishop of Troves should console, himself with 
the memories of what took place in Germany under Bismarck, 
and how finally the Catholic Church grew more rapidly than 
ever, and Bismarck was obliged to go to Canossa. 

Since midsummer the. tone of the anticlerical press and 
populace has become bitterly abusive. The Gaidois, the 
stoutest champion of the Vatican in Paris, has declared : 
"This time it will be a momentous struggle, a foundation 
shock." Religious processions have been stoned, churches 
and cathedrals have been entered and defaced and emblems 
of faith have been publicly mocked. 

Yet the Pope, moves on, and Premier Combes likewise. 
Two bishops whom the Premier sought to shield behind the 
concordat, have practically been ousted from their sees, one 
of them going to Rome. Meanwhile the political relation- 
ships came to a clash. The minister of Public worship forbade 
the Pope to send communications and to give advice to pre- 
lates over whom he has disciplinary powers. Then the 



41 

Vatican took one. step more and prepared to deprive France 
of the honorable right to protect Roman Catholic interests in 
the Orient. If the papal journals are correct, the Pope will 
not flinch. He regards the Vatican's war with France, not as 
a legal contest as to the interpretation of the Concordat, but 
as the beginning of a moral uplift of the whole Roman Cath- 
olic clergy. He is said to have the ideal of the great Hilde- 
brand before him in his present vigorous attempt to reform 
the worship and the morals of the Church. Italy might be as 
promising a field for this work as France, since at present 
a French bishop can not even go to Rome without the per- 
mission of the Government which has named him, and which 
requires of him an oath to serve the French government be- 
fore all others. 

Thus do we find once again the old, old story of the 
struggle for balance of power between Church and state, to 
be prominent in modern France, even as it still exists in some 
form throughout the world, here in America for instance, and 
likewise in Germany and Austria ; in the conflicting claims of 
Church and state for the right of the control of the study time 
and formative period in the life of the growing child. 

The French Parliament reassembled about the middle of 
last October and the policy announced by President Combes 
included the abandonment of the French protectorate in the 
Orient, the abrogation of the Concordat, the separation of 
church and state. President Combes himself has asserted a 
radical incompatibility, not merely of temper, but of princi- 
ples, between church and state, that must lead to divorce. Yet 
it is his desire to bring it about in a conciliatory manner : 

"Whether we have to do with buildings devoted to worship, or with pen- 
sions to be allotted to the present holders of posts under the Concordat, 
there is no reasonable concession, no sacrifice in conformity with justice that 
I, for my part, am not disposed to advise, in order that the separation of 
church and state may inaugurate a new and lasting era of social peace, by 
guaranteeing to religious communions real liberty under the undisputed sov- 
ereignty of the state." 

The latest news from France at this writing is a sensa- 
tion, which has resulted in dealing a heavy blow to the Combes 
ministry. It appears that the French government had in- 
augurated a spy system intended to work for the exclusion of 



42 

"clerical" officers from the higher grades in the French Army. 
This secret anti-Roman activity in army circles was exposed 
in the Paris Figaro, and brought on a crisis. The ministry 
escaped entire defeat only by two votes, and by the inter- 
vention of a socialist leader in its behalf. 

The movement for separation has been checked, but not 
suppressed. Indeed a government commission has prepared 
a draft-bill in the interests of the policy of separation and 
President Combes, addressing- the commission and approving 
the bill, has expressed himself most emphatically on funda- 
mental principles, declaring that while there is no contradic- 
tion in principle between monarchy and the church, since both 
are inspired by authority and tradition, the contradiction be- 
tween church and democracy is inevitable. He goes so far as 
to declare that, "the fundamental principles of a democracy 
are the negation of authority, of tradition, and of divine 
right." He charges the Church with showing sympathy for 
monarchies "in view of the retrograde character of this form 
of government ; and she. has always manifested an invincible 
aversion for the Republic, a government of free investigation, 
which opposes reason to dogma, the sovereignty of the people 
to the authority of tradition." 

President Combes directly charges the church with not 
having begun to stand on her own independent rights until 
the state became a republic and he at least attempts to show 
that the Roman Church, in view of its doctrinal position, can- 
not tolerate any republican form of government, because the 
Pope has political doctrines and revelations of an inspired 
character, which must interfere with a government, which is 
outside of the range of its influence. He charges that the 
late papal Syllabus "declares war on civilization, on liberty, on 
democracy, on all contemporary thought." 

Here is a hint which the American people, and, par- 
ticularly, American politicians and journals might do well to 
ponder. While not sympathizing in full with the utterance of 
Combes, we quote a paragraph of it in full for our readers, 
as follows : 



43 

"The history of the, past will serve us as a lesson for the future. It 
teaches us that any new Concordat will be violated as the old one was. 
And, in fact, the establishment of the republic coincided with the revolu- 
tion introduced by Pius IX into the church. This revolution consists, as 
you know, in the fact that the personal decisions of the Pope are invested 
henceforth with the infallibility which belonged to the whole church as- 
sembled in council. The religious, political, and social doctrines of the 
Pope constitute so many revelations, for the Holy Ghost inspires their au- 
thor. Such is the new doctrine set forth in the encyclical 'Quanta cura' and 
of which the Syllabus is the applied commentary. The Syllabus, in fact, 
declares war on civilization, on liberty, on democracy, on all contemporary 
thought. I invite all of you who have not read it, or who have read it only 
superficially, to study it attentively. Those whom the preconceived ideas 
of faith do not prejudice against the suggestions of reason will see how this 
initial doctrine of contemporary Catholicism renders out of the question 
any durable and serious accord between church and state." 

These very serious utterances on one of the most funda- 
mental questions of the day, affecting every nation, including 
the United States, that comes into contact with the Roman 
curia, has led to a new study in Europe of the Roman church 
as a temporary power. Anatole France, a celebrated member 
of the French Academy, thus sets forth the Roman theory : 

"The Roman Church is at once a temporal and spiritual 
power. She rests her right to rule the world upon the cano- 
nical evangelists, upon the tradition of the primitive church, 
upon the concession of Constantine, upon the sacred cano- 
nical books and the sacred decretals. 

"Whether the Roman Church now possesses a territorial 
domain or simply dwells in a palace, she is a state. She is a 
temporal power distinguished from the Powers with which 
she negotiates in that the latter have set boundaries to their 
sovereignty, whereas the church can recognize no boundaries 
to her sovereignty without repudiating her origin, changing 
her nature, without betraying herself and contradicting her- 
self. In opposition to the other Powers, which, because their 
feet rest upon that which is human, recognize the. conditions 
which man and nature impose upon them by subordinating 
their will, their disposition, and their laws to the force of cir- 
cumstance, the church must not yield any of her power, which, 
as she always teaches, was given to her as a sacred bequest. 
Nor should she yield rights which she professes to have re- 
ceived from heaven. 



44 

"The very nature of this institution, as the church ex- 
pounds it to us, invests her with civil and political authority 
over the whole world. Because she is a spiritual power, she 
is a temporal power. Because souls should be subject to her, 
she undertakes to subject bodies to herself. And in fact it is 
difficult to imagine a domination of the spirit without a domi- 
nation of the flesh. It is true, that the church raises herself 
above the things of this world. It is equally true that she em- 
braces these things and permeates them. She rules the world, 
but she is of the world. . . . 

"The church makes it her mission to save the world, and 
to this end she has prescribed certain formulas and customs, 
has set forth rules of life for the union of the sexes, for food, 
days of rest, feasts, and education of children, the right to 
write, speak, and think. To make sure of the carrying out of 
these rules — which, so far from affecting the purely spiritual 
domain only, come to a great extent within the police power 
of the state — the church must exercise a right of control over 
the government of all nations and hence must assume a place 
in the government of all peoples." 

The Bishop of Seez, in a pastoral letter in August, 1904, 
has strikingly defined this exalted and special mission : "The 
church has inalienable rights over men as well as over So- 
ciety. She holds these rights from God and no one can take 
them away from her. . . . She is the. authority of God upon 
earth, and this authority must be exercised with reference 
to souls, which are subject to her, with reference, to bodies in 
all questions that are questions of conscience, with reference 
to all social questions that affect the spiritual domain. 

"Every duty implies a rig"ht. As the church alone possesses 
truth, she undertook the task of propagating it and of 
opposing antithetical error. This task she can not fulfill with- 
out supporting herself by means of temporal principles, or to 
use her own language, without making use of the secular 
arm. . . . The. Pope is sovereign. Kings, emperors, are 
his representatives. The Pope, to employ a phrase of Pope 
Innocent's, is to the emperor what the sun is to the moon." . 

If this doctrine, announced so frequently within the last 



45 

twelve months, and practiced for centuries by Rome, be 
true, is it not also true that the President, the government 
and the people of America, when it comes to a crucial ques- 
tion between church and state, must necessarily be estimated 
by Rome as "the moon," of which she herself is "the sun?" 

"The official organ of the Vatican, the Osservatore Ro- 
mano, declares regarding the relations which should subsist 
between church and state : 

"Separation of the two perfect societies, constituted such by God, is a 
monstrosity, and to this monstrosity the church can not adjust herself in 
Catholic states and has to combat it." And on the attitude of the church 
toward liberty and toleration, the organ of the Vatican says: 

"Freedom of the press is an error condemnable and condemned. It is 
contrary to sense in philosophy, and in theology a monstrosity, in the same 
manner as freedom of worship and of conscience, and of thought." 

"Distinguishing rationally, there emerges the acceptable, and accepted 
maxim of toleration of freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience 
on the part of the church, and even invoked, as hypothesis. Toleration is 
one thing, approval is another." . . . 

In plain words, freedom of conscience, worship, thought, 
speech and press, are an error, interdicted in Catholic coun- 
tries, and tolerated, but not approved elsewhere. What the 
Roman church tolerates, but does not approve, she will set her- 
self at the opportune, moment to remove. 

Perhaps our readers may have forgotten the remarkable 
character of the terms which the state and the church entered 
into, when, in 1801, the Concordat, or treaty governing the 
relations of France and the Papacy, received the signatures 
of Napoleon, the First Consul, and of Pope Pius VII. The 
Concordat proclaims full liberty to the Catholic-Apostolic- 
Roman religion in France. But the church must adapt itself 
and its worship to such regulations as seem to be necessary to 
the government for public order. And the so-called "Organic 
Articles," which Napoleon as Consul added in 1802 when the 
Concordat was made public, further emphatically declares that, 
"'No bull, no breve, rescript, decree, order, nor any other mis- 
sive of the Roman court, even if it concerns private persons, 
may be received, printed, made public, or in any wise given 
power in France without the authority of the French govern- 
ment. No one, whether he called himself nuntius, legate, 



4 6 

vicar, or commissioner of the Apostolic See, or whether he use 
any other title, can exercise any of the functions pertaining to 
the Gallican Church on French soil, or elsewhere, without such 
authorization." It is true that the "Organic Articles," to 
which these very decided limitations belong, have never been 
formally recognized by the Vatican, but have been granted 
only silent tolerance. It may be remarked in passing that 
these articles still retain the old national name, "Gallican 
Church," presumably to show that the ideal of a national self- 
existing Catholic Church for France bad not entirely disap- 
peared. As to the filling of vacant bishoprics, the state 
chooses them from among those priests fitted to discharge 
such functions. The Pope bestows upon them the canonical 
institution. The appointing power then is really the minister 
of worship of the republic, and the statement has been made 
that for many years this vast power has been in the hands of 
a single individual in France. 

One of the most important of the stipulations of the Con- 
cordat, to the Roman Church, is that the French government 
is to devote the sum of ten millions each year to the stipends 
of the bishops and parish priests. If this should be repealed, 
the French clergy, like our own American priests, would be 
dependent on the voluntary contributions of their flocks, and 
probably as a result, there would be a serious decline in the 
amount of subscriptions annually sent by the French govern- 
ment to Rome for the maintenance of the Papacy. 

THIS brings us to the Papal finances. For finances have 
played a much larger part in the political policy of the 
Papacy than the uninitiated world at large supposes. 
Only a short time ago it leaked out that the real object of the 
recent visit of Cardinal Satolli to America (the object was un- 
known even to the Roman episcopy and clergy), was the secur- 
ing of a large sum of money for the Peter's Pence fund of the 
Pope at Rome. It is stated that the amount that Satolli laid 
at the feet of grateful Pius X exceeded two million francs. 

This was a fine sum to add to the Vatican funds. And 
yet it by no means suffices to allay the financial stringency of 



47 

the treasury of the one who claims to be the only Vicar of Him, 
Who had not where to lay His head. The diminution of the 
amount of Peter's Pence annually sent to Rome from Eng- 
land, and the seizure of Rome by the Italian government, thus 
removing from the Pope's coffers the wealth of the city which 
had always been his principal source of revenue, has greatly 
reduced the working capital of the pontiff on which he de- 
pends for a sure income. When Pius IX died, the capital 
of the Pope amounted to £ 1,200,000, but Leo XIII became 
so exceedingly anxious to increase the capital that he was in- 
duced to invest in several very risky financial enterprises, which 
ended in a severe disaster in 1893, when the Holy See lost 
£400,000. Leo, who was an uncommonly good representa- 
tive of a close fisted business man, felt this reverse most keenly, 
and after ten months of strenuous struggle, told one of his car- 
dinals a few months before his death that half of the money 
had been recovered. By this he meant that he had again 
brought his capital up to £1,000,000, by saving interest; and 
out of the offerings made directly to him in the twenty-five 
years of his Pontificate, he had saved £600,000 more; so that 
he really left more to his successor than he had received from 
his predecessor. And yet in addition our economical pontiff 
had spent no less than £2,000,000 in church buildings, restora- 
tions and works of art, having lavished £280,000 alone upon 
the apse and the repairs in St. John Lateran in Rome. 

When, consequently, Satolli returned and laid his bag of 
2,000,000 francs at the foot of the Papal chair, it was no won- 
der that pious Pius X patted him approvingly on the head, 
and said to him, "Good son. Thou art worthy of thy spiritual 
parentage." 

Yet for all this the papacy has never been able to forget 
the day when the treasures of Rome herself were poured into 
its lap rather than into the coffers of the Italian government. 

But if the difficulties with the French Republic should 
prove disastrous in the final result, there is still one way open 
for the Pope. It turns out that recently the Vatican has been 
cultivating a much more cordial relationship with the Italian 
government, than has ever been the case before. If the Holy 



4 8 

Father can bring himself to forgive (at least temporarily) Italy 
for the wrongs done through so many years to the Prisoner of 
the Vatican, there is still six hundred thousand dollars a year 
in the Italian treasury , at the Pope's disposal ; and not as a 
stipend, but as the quid pro quo for the property of the Papacy 
which was taken by the state in 1870. 

It really looks very much as though the Pope would bring 
himself to accept this hitherto despised gift from the hated Ital- 
ian government. The Holy Father would certainly be in a 
more independent position, and be able to maintain the pres- 
tige and discipline of the Church in France much more effec- 
tively, if he preferred this amount to the ten million francs 
which has been furnished annually to the Gallican clergy by 
the French government under the terms of the Concordat. 

It is noteworthy that the pope, a few months ago, used the 
influence of the Roman Church to preserve Victor Emanuel 
upon his throne. It has been four years since Victor Emanuel 
succeeded his father to the throne of Italy, and since that time 
the legislature has never been dissolved. But when, this Fall, 
the socialist leaders declared a paralyzing strike which tied up 
the whole, country, simply for the purpose of giving a public 
demonstration of their power, the King resolved to dissolve 
the parliament and to appeal to the country by means of a gen- 
eral election. It was an election for the throne itself, rather 
than for the cabinet. Now, ever since the Papacy has lost its 
temporal power, that is since 1870, Roman Catholics in Italy 
have been forbidden by the Vatican to take part in parliamen- 
tary elections. Much pressure was brought upon the last two 
popes to withdraw this order, but of no avail. Pius the X has 
been known as favoring the participation of Catholics in par- 
liamentary elections, and while he did not revoke the prohibi- 
tion issued by his predecessors as to voting, yet, as a matter 
of fact, an immense Catholic vote was cast in favor of the 
House of Savoy. For, instructions had been sent through 
the bishops to the clergy throughout the kingdom, authoriz- 
ing the faithful to go to the polls and vote against the declared 
foe of the Church, that is to say against the socialists, and 
consequently in favor of King Emanuel. By this move the 



49 

pope has not only gained a great victory over the socialists 
against the Church, but he has also supported the conserva- 
tive power, that is the monarchy in Italy, and thus apparently 
has taken a step in the direction of reconciling the Church and 
the State. It is the first time that the monarchy and the 
Church have united at the polls against socialism. 

By way of most striking contrast with the Papal hierarchy 
the proceedings of the Congress of Freethinkers, which this 
Fall held a session in Rome in the Roman College, in the face 
of the Vatican, and which was largely composed of French del- 
egates, was an extraordinary spectacle. Though really a 
fiasco, and composed to a large extent of French delegates 
who took advantage of cheap tickets provided by French rail- 
way companies to visit Rome, the spectacle it presented was 
picturesque. The chairman is represented as wearing the 
leather cap of a motor chauffeur while presiding. Prof. Haeckel 
is said to have made a speech wearing a huge felt hat. M. 
Berthelot, the French Minister and intimate friend of Renan, 
sent a letter to the Congress in which he advised real tolerance 
of liberty of thought, whether Christian or not. This is taken 
to be a rebuke and disapproval of Premier Combes' measures 
for prosecuting the Catholic Associations in France. 



AVERY interesting minor dispute between Roman Italy 
and the antiquarians of Great Britain has been raised 
by the demand of the chapter of the Ascoli Cathedral, 
supported by the Italian government, that J. Pierpont Mor- 
gan should restore to the Cathedral at Ascoli the cope which 
disappeared from thence a few years ago and which Mr. Mor- 
gan recently purchased from professional art collectors and 
placed on exhibition with other of his treasures at the South 
Kensington Museum, London. 

The British, it seems, unanimously dispute the Italian de- 
mand for restitution. Even the Roman Catholics in England 
are against it. Since the cope is of English workmanship, 
and a superb specimen of the Opus Anglican embroidery, fa- 



5o 

mous in mediaeval art history, it would be more just, it is 
claimed, that the vestment remain in England. The fact that 
it was presented by Pope Nicholas IV, somewhere about A. 
D. 1290, to the Cathedral of his native town of Ascoli, and has 
been preserved there since, does not weigh with the English 
mind. The British claim that no one knows how it came into 
the hands of Nicholas IV, who may have purchased it inno- 
cently enough. 

The incident opens a very large question with reference to 
the ethics of historical property. If the claim of the Italians 
is to be admitted, and the possession of art treasures and his- 
torical relics is to be determined by their original title, the 
museums and churches of Europe, and the public galleries of 
America would perhaps be morally obliged to give up their 
most precious treasures. Thus the British Museum ought 
restore to the Greek government the famous Elgin marbles, 
which were purchased in a legitimate way by Lord Elgin who 
in turn disposed of them to the British Museum. Yet had 
these marbles been left with the other sculptures at the Par- 
thenon, they would have been most lamentably injured by want 
of proper care. On the same principle, the Louvre at Paris 
would be compelled to give back Murillo's Immaculate Con- 
ception to Spain, whence it was carried off by the French Mar- 
shal Soult when Joseph Bonaparte was on the Spanish throne. 
The first Napoleon and his generals despoiled all public insti- 
tutions and palaces of the countries through which his armies 
went ; and after his downfall, they found their way through va- 
rious hands by means of sale until they reached their present 
destination in the palaces and museums of countries in the old 
world. 

Since the battle of Waterloo, the forcible appropriation of 
valuable articles in wars between civilized nations has been 
abandoned. But the practice still continues in conflicts with 
Asiatic and African nations. Windsor Castle is said to be full 
of priceless porcelains, silks, enamels, etc., taken in this man- 
ner. The splendid treasures of King Theban of Burmah ; the 
personal valuables of the two kings of Ashanti ; the crown of 
Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia, are at'the South Kensington 



5i 

Museum. Many splendid jeweled ornaments taken from the 
Indian Empire, are preserved at Windsor Castle. The Water- 
loo gallery of Windsor Castle contains gold and silver, much 
of which was used for sacramental purposes in past ages by 
the Roman Catholic Church ; and was taken in the days of 
the Spanish Armada, when the British ships plundered and 
sacked the churches of the Spanish main. Emperor William 
only four years ago received as a portion of the plunder from 
Peking a number of very interesting astronomical instruments 
several hundred years old ; and these are now one of the attrac- 
tions at Potsdam. The churches of Europe themselves con- 
tain a great many relics and memorials which were undoubt- 
edly removed by violence or in an unlawful manner from the 
place of their original ownership. If the question respecting 
original ownership were carried consistently to its deepest 
source, it would at last reach the basis of all permanent owner- 
ship, viz., territorial possession ; and the right, for instance, of 
Americans to their property, which originally had been taken 
from the Indians, might be disputed on ethical grounds ; 
while the colonial possessions of Italy, Germany, France, Rus- 
sia, Spain and Great Britain, would hang trembling in the bal- 
ance. In our opinion, while possession is not nine-tenths of 
the moral law, and twenty years possession is not sufficient on 
moral grounds to establish legitimate ownership ; yet, if any 
generation of men finds the actual custody of alien property 
to be actually vested in its hands, other questions, in addition 
to that of original title, enter into the consideration of the 
problem. Mr. Roosevelt puts things right when he somewhere 
declares that the justification for any other than original owner- 
ship must ultimately rest chiefly on the better preservation and 
usefulness with which the custodians in fact are able to surround 
a property, and we may add, to make it serve its highest pur- 
pose. Grounds such as these would be totally unlawful if de- 
clared operative in the seizure of property ; but we may apply 
them, after long periods of historical interruption, to the re- 
tention of property. The questions as to whether Lutheran- 
ism has morally forfeited title to the Old Swedes' Church at 
Wicaco; whether old German foundations can be claimed by 



52 

English descendants ; whether the endowments made for an 
orthodox institution can be) morally used by incumbents who no 
longer teach in accord with the old foundations, are instances, 
speaking legally, of the principles that underlie a proper dis- 
position of Mr. Morgan's embroidered mediaeval cope. Since 
writing the above, it has been announced that Mr. Mor- 
gan has concluded to present the cope to Italy. This is good 
sense. It first of all teaches doctrinaires and theorists that 
possession legally belongs to Mr. Morgan, and that if he parts 
with it, it is not as a matter of legal right, but as a gift. Sec- 
ond, Great Britain's only claim is that the cope is "of English 
workmanship." The British cannot point out any original 
owner, nor any chain of title. They would not be able to 
prove that the "English workmanship" had not been done on 
Italian soil, or purchased (as German paramenta to-day are 
purchased in America) with Italian money. On the other 
hand Italy can point to a definite claimant, the Chapter of 
Ascoli, and to an uninterrupted chain of possession and safe 
custodianship through six centuries. Many vague and sweep- 
ing ecclesiastical and political claims of the British and of other 
people would vanish under the application of a little business 
sense. 

Here, for instance, is the Roman archbishop of Chicago, 
who a year ago, startled the country with his dictum : "The 
new world was discovered by the Catholics and the Cross was 
planted in the name of the Church. We cannot get it out of 
our heads that Catholics will yet claim the new world again." 
If their second rule is to be as corrupt as their first was, Amer- 
ica may well pray that the day desired by the Bishop be post- 
poned. Yet the Bishop declared that the national constitu- 
tion has been made more secure by the increase of Catholicism 
in this country, and he pleads for the establishment of a subsidi- 
ary system of public schools "for the benefit of the minority, and 
which should be paid for by the state, but controlled by the 
Church." He declared that the rule requiring public school 
teachers to have normal school training is tyranny. The fun- 
damental error of the age, said he, is liberalism. Liberalism 
delegates to the state all rights, and this where the state and 



53 

church conflict. "The education of the child should rest with 
the church and not with the state." 

The archbishop is a Canadian by birth, 50 years of age, 
and he handles this vital question of the day very much as a 
man with a keen insight, but narrow outlook, would be prompt- 
ed to do. It is entirely true that the state has not all right 
to the child,, but it is also true that the state has some right, 
that is a secular right over the child. It is not true that Pro- 
testants are undertaking through the present public school sys- 
tem to prevent the Catholic children from becoming firmly 
cemented to their church, or that the public school system is 
attempting to prevent the growth of the Church ; but it is true 
that Protestants are opposed to the appropriation of public mo- 
neys for the teaching of religion. It is true that the state 
should offer an education to the minority as well as the ma- 
jority ; but it is not true that the Roman Catholic minority is 
the only minority ; and that the minority would be satisfac- 
torily provided for if Romanism had its way and its wants were 
supplied. 

That sound constitutional Americanism is not always fur- 
thered by the Roman Church is evident from a number of facts. 
Last March ., for instance, a very curious suit was brought into 
the civil Tribunal of Rome against the Supreme head of the 
Jesuit Order, Lodovico Martin. It is an action attempting to 
recover expenses said to have been incurred for services ren- 
dered in destroying the separatist movement of the Roman 
Catholics in the United States under the alleged leadership of 
Archbishop Ireland and the Paulist fathers. The plaintiff 
avers that the work he did was undertaken with the approval 
of the Jesuit general and upon his promise to pay for it. 

In this action the plaintiff affirms that the Paulist fathers 
were organized to take away 10,000,000 American Catholics 
from the jurisdiction of Rome. The plaintiff claims that the 
Jesuits made unsuccessful attempts to oppose this new move- 
ment until his project was put into operation. It was the ob- 
ject of the new movement, according to the plaintiff, to extend 
the influence of the Monroe Doctrine "to the practice of the 
Roman Catholic faith." "Various priests and their followers 



54 

accepted the reform movement inspired by the Spiritualism of 
the so-called Patilists, who preached direct relations between 
God and man, without any priestly intervention." This Paulist 
movement aimed at the independence of American CatJwlics over 
all foreign influences, including the Papacy. It is claimed to 
have received the support of the Federal government, headed 
by President McKinley, and took as its motto, "America for 
Americans," and became known as Americanism. 

At the critical moment the plaintiff, the Roman corre- 
spondent of the New York World, perceived the great danger 
to the Holy See, especially as the Jesuits were unable to cope 
with it, and after gaining abundant information through secret 
agents from America, he went to the head of the Jesuit Order 
and explained his plan for the defence of the Roman Church, 
which included the cooperation of the Jesuits by having them 
induce the Pope to issue an encyclical against Americanism and 
to discipline Archbishop Ireland "the leader of the reform 
ideas." Then the plaintiff was to induce American correspond- 
ents to censure the Papal attitude, which he would defend, 
through a newspaper to be published in Rome. On Febru- 
ary 4th, 1889, the plaintiff issued his Italian-English paper 
called "True American Catholic," which he distributed widely. 
On the January following the Pope issued his Encyclical 
against Americanism, and thus, "the Hydra of Americanism 
was crushed ; the victory of the Holy See was complete." The 
only evidence that seems to legally connect the head of the 
Jesuit order with a plan of this kind was an interview which he 
admits, and a statement made by him as follows : "There are 
good deeds that we compensate." 

We give this episode, not with any idea that the plaintiff 
could make good his claims, but as an insight into the possi- 
bilities and ways of working things through the Jesuits in the 
Roman Church of America. 

One of the genuine religious sensations of the year was 
the public renunciation by a French Countess, formerly the 
American Miss Mary G. Caldwell, of the Romish faith. Miss 
Caldwell lias been the founder and the leading patron of the 
Roman university at Washington, and her case awakened great 



55 

interest. The Associated Press published the following in- 
terview : • 

"Yes, it is true that I have left the Roman Catholic Church. Since I 
have been living in Europe my eyes have been opened to what that church 
really is and to its anything but sanctity. 

"But the trouble goes much further back than this. Being naturally 
religious, my imagination was early caught by the idea of doing something 
to lift the church from the lowly position which it occupied in America, so 
I thought of a university or higher school where its clergy could be educated, 
and, if possible, refined. Of course in this I was greatly influenced by Bishop 
Spalding, of Peoria, who represented it to me as one of the greatest works 
of the day. 

"When I was twenty-one I turned over to them one-third of my fortune 
ior that purpose. But for years I have been trying to rid myself of the 
subtle yet overwhelming influence of a church which pretended not only to 
the privilege of being 'the only true church,' but of being alone able to open 
the gates of heaven to a sorrowful, sinful world. At last my honest Pro- 
testant blood has asserted itself and I now forever repudiate and cast off 
'the yoke of Rome.' " 

It will be remembered that Miss Caldwell was the daugh- 
ter of a wealthy citizen of Louisville, Kentucky, who became 
a Roman Catholic shortly before his death. At his death the 
daughters were placed in the care of Catholic friends, and 
Bishop Spalding was their guardian and the administrator of 
their father's large estate. Miss Caldwell became interested 
in the new project of having a great Catholic university in 
America and offered to endow the proposed institution. Her 
first gift was a half-million dollars. She purchased 80 acres 
on the edge of the city, turned the land into a park, and built 
three of the costliest buildings of the present group of 14, in- 
cluding the chapel, and provided for the maintenance of the 
university for three years. Whatever the cause of her re- 
nunciation of the Roman faith, it must be a stunning blow to 
the church, which, so far as we know, has endeavored to main- 
tain an attitude of absolute silence with regard to the matter. 

A NATIONAL Catholic Church has been organized in the 
Philippines, it is said, entirely free of Rome. Our read- 
ers recall that the Philippines exhibited hatred toward 
the Spanish clergy, especially the monastic orders, and that 
the monks received seven and a half-millions of dollars from 
the state, and left the islands ; and that the Pope organized a 



56 

new hierarchy, which, however, has not been able to hinder 
the rise of the new national church. Its head -is the for- 
mer Roman priest Aglipay in Manilla, who bears the title 
Abispo Maximo. The new church has published an official 
weekly for about a year. The new communion with fifteen 
bishops is in possession of the churches, but this possession is 
disputed by the new Roman Bishops. Aglipay and his fol- 
lowers assert that the possessions were gathered by the Philip- 
pines and not by Rome, and that they belong to the people and 
to the national clergy. The matter will probably require judi- 
cial decision. 

This national Catholic Philippine Church stands in friend- 
ly relation to the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, and 
praises the wisdom of Governor Taft's administration, as pro- 
tecting all forms of worship equally, without being influenced 
by any. Roman papers in Europe assert that "the schism has 
already come to a lamentable end." 

The former Superintendent of education in the Philip- 
pines, Frederic W. Atkinson, has given us a discriminative in- 
sight into many things that need be done in the Philippines be- 
fore these people reach a common American standard. The first 
great movement was the separation of church and state. The 
second was the division and co-ordination of judiciary, legis- 
lative and executive powers. The third was the right of suf- 
frage, the writ of habeas corpus, and assemblv. The fourth 
was the abrogation of obligatory military service, and aboli- 
tion of the practice of banishment. Remember Spain has jus- 
tified her conquest on religious grounds, but as the United 
States professes hers on moral grounds, there are many more 
things which America must undertake. She must cultivate a 
greater political trustworthiness, and respect of the minority, 
and freedom from aristocracy and caste, which would be fatal 
to a democratic form of government ; a reliance on the security 
of property in the interior, and on prompt justice and a power 
of moral restraint. Mr. Atkinson asserts very positively that 
no jury system will be possible for sometime to come, and that 
all public money must be handled by American officials of in- 
tegrity. No matter whether we consider the Philippines to 



57 

have been acquired rightly or wrongly, the Philippines are 
bound to develop in some way, and we are now to a large ex- 
tent responsible for the right or wrong of that way. 

IT is not only in the Philippines, or among uncivilized peoples, 
or in the Roman Church that church quarrels and unex- 
pected religious developments take place. A most aston- 
ishing thing happened last August in the Presbyterian Church 
in Scotland. Twenty-four ministers and their congregations 
were declared by the British House of Lords as legally con- 
stituting the whole Free Church of Scotland, and as the owner 
of more than $10,000,000 in accumulated capital, with over a 
thousand churches and manses throughout Scotland, with col- 
leges, assembly halls, and missions throughout the world, and 
with a total property which could not be replaced without an 
expenditure of $50,000,000 ; while at the same time 1 100 minis- 
ters and congregations, constituting almost the entire Presby- 
terian Church of Scotland and forming the new United Free 
Church, were dispossessed of all this property. The total 
working assets of the United Free Church have been taken 
away, and the 1100 ministers have been at least nominally de- 
prived of their pulpits and homes. 

This extraordinary British decision is the culmination of 
a four years' legal battle, which came as the climax to a gen- 
eration's effort to unite the Scotch Presbyterian Church. 
These Scotch Presbyterians have ever been interminable in 
their sectarian off-shoots and, in migrating to America, laid 
the foundation for more than their share of this new world's 
sectarianism. 

Thirty years ago Dr. Rainy, Principal of New College, 
Edinburgh, proposed to make an effort to unite the many 
scattered kinds of Presbyterians. There were the Secession- 
ists of 1733, and the Relief Church which was founded in 1761, 
which two bodies fused together into the United Presbyterian 
Church in 1847. I n addition to this United Presbyterian 
Church there was also the Established Presbyterian Church 
of Scotland, from which the Secessionists had revolted. In 
1843, 45o ministers, with Dr. Chalmers at the head, seceded 



58 

from the Established Church and constituted themselves into 
the Free Church of Scotland, which in the course of several 
decades attracted other bodies of separatists. Among these 
were the earlier Seceders who united with the Free Church in 
1852, and, after a long struggle, the New Lights united with 
the Free Church in 1876. 

At last in 1900 the life-long effort of Dr. Rainy proved to 
be successful and he had the satisfaction of being able to fuse 
together the two largest religious bodies in Scotland, viz., the 
United Presbyterian Church with a membership of almost 200.- 
coo and the Free Church with a membership of nearly 300,000 
into one body, dependent upon voluntary support. . This 
was now the one great body dissenting from the established 
order of the Scotch Presbyterian Church. 

This great reunion, which was a matter of property adjust- 
ment rather than of theological discussion, was arranged by a 
Joint Committee who took five years to making a series of 
compromises. It was adopted in the vear 1900, unanimously 
in the United Presbyterian Synod, and by a vote of 522 to 29 
in the Free Church. 

It is this protesting remnant of 29, which was reduced to 
24. and which remained outside of the New United Free 
Church, which has been creating the sensation this year. They 
have actually gotten absolute control, as far as the law is con- 
cerned, over the ecclesiastical funds and properties of the 
Church. They constitute the more ignorant and less benevo- 
lent congregations in the Highlands. First of all they appeal- 
ed to the Scottish Courts, and were twice unsuccessful. Four 
judges united in the decision that the Free Church was a self- 
governing body, and that the majority had the right to carry 
the property with them into the United Free Church. 

But these 24, still unabashed, appealed to the House of 
Lords and this highest authority, amazing to say, sustained 
their appeal. 

The decision of the House of Lords is based upon the 
legal effect of the disposition of a trust. Its foundation is the 
dictum that the original purpose of a trust predetermines the 



59 

use which is to be made of the accumulations of money un- 
der it. 

Lord Halsbury declares that the Free Church was not a 
revolt against the principle of an Established Church, but against 
an inequitable enforcement of it ; and that therefore its funds 
could not be diverted to the United Church which had been 
founded and administered on the voluntary principle. He also 
finds essential differences between the two Bodies on the Cal- 
vinistic and Armenian doctrines of Predestination, and decides 
that fusion involves abuse, and violation of trust, and that the 
remnant of 24 is entitled, as the real Free Church, to ad- 
minister all the vested interests of the Church founded in 1843. 

Three judges and the Lord Chief Justice concur with the 
Lord Chancellor in this view, but two other judges dissent. 
The majority declares that when men have subscribed money 
for a particular object and left it behind them for the promotion 
of definite principles, their successors have no right to divert it 
from the original purposes. 

Meantime, however, this decision is so sweeping that the 
Highland ministers cannot fail to be embarrassed by their very 
wealth. They cannot administer the properties declared to be 
theirs, nor expel the ministers of the United Free Church, and 
supply the vacant pulpits. It is supposed that the only remedy 
will be an act of Parliament which will have to arrange some 
sort of Concordat between the two parties. One comment on 
this final decision of the House of Lords has been that while 
it is doubtless good law, it may be very poor sense. And it 
is not the first time in ecclesiastical controversy that good law 
and good sense have come to an absolute divorce from each 
other. The constitution and discipline of the Lutheran Church 
may seem to be very primitive in comparison with the more 
highly developed type of ecclesiastical Presbyterianism, and 
our resorts to ecclesiastical procedure may be quite crude and 
bungling, on occasion ; but let us be thankful that the energies 
of our Church are not devoted to the development of bristling 
technicalities in connection with ecclesiastical law, and that 
our leading Lights, do not, as sound Lutherans cannot, lay the 
emphasis on the external side of ecclesiastical organization^ 



6o 

even though Dr. Carroll and other American unionists deem 
it criminal not to do so. 



WHEN we come to look at Europe as a whole, in its po- 
litical and religious development during the year 1904, 
one of the most, striking Twentieth Century features 
that wc behold is the fact that the heads of the great nations 
are now themselves taking the leading and decisive role in af- 
fairs, and their prime ministers and foreign ministers are be- 
ing relegated to the background. In olden times it was Bis- 
marck rather than William, Gortschacoff rather than Alexander 
II, Crispi rather than King Humbert, Disraeli, Gladstone, Bal- 
four, Chamberlain, rather than Queen Victoria, who ruled. 
But to-day it is Edward the VII himself ; it is the Italian King; 
it is the German Kaiser, who are standing at the head of af- 
fairs, as representatives of their own nation. The fact that in 
France President Loubet is a secondary figure, and in Russia 
the Czar only rules in his own majesty on occasion, does not in- 
validate the principle. 

It is quite possible that Edward VII, who has adopted the 
policy of his mother, in keeping in his own hands a direct con- 
trol over the foreign affairs of Great Britian, has been under 
the influence of the German Emperor, whose imposing per- 
sonality has been so prominent in his several visits to England. 
But the conviction is gaining ground that Edward is winning 
a place in the political world by the side and at the expense of 
the German Emperor.f In Europe he seems to be regarded as 
the first and most accomplished diplomatist of his country, as 
a great constitutional sovereign, respected by his people and 
deferred to by his ministers. It is the pen of a Frenchman, 
of course, that has drawn the following picturesque compari- 
son : 



tThe Kaiser, according to news of December 21, has just thrown down 
the gauntlet to England and told the British Cabinet that if it wanted war, 
it could have it at once. The trouble has arisen from a series of articles 
in the British army and navy gazette stating that the, Kaiser's navy was 
growing so as to be rapidly becoming a menace to Great Britain. 



6i 

"Edward VII. abuses neither pen nor language. He does not. yield to the 
temptation of uttering oracles. He constructs no sermons, no courses in 
history, DO theological dcflnilioiiK. He has never spoken of Hammurabi nor 
of Baruch. He says what i.s necessary, and be Kay« it. with moderation. 
iii« realistic sense would prevent bim from recalling the Hobenstauffens to 
the memory of our epoch, if he has thought It necessary to mention Water- 
loo, he would have refrained from ascribing the whole credit of the victory 
to l he, heroic re.-ii.si a rice of Wellington. I lis tact, permif.H him to venture 
upon bistorlcal illusions without giving offense. 

"Edward the VI 1. hat) a knowledge, a practical acquaintance, an under- 
standing, of other nations. He doe« not interpret everything instinctively, 
as do the majority of his countrymen, in accordance with his insular con- 
ception*. This gift is precious at a time when England begins at last to 
perceive that most of her recent vexations must be attributed to her self- 
esteem, SO disdainful of everything foreign." 

England perhaps places the scheme of the Bagdad Rail- 
way, which loaded upon London the loan for Emperor Wil- 
liam's Asia Minor railroad project, and the action of Great Brit- 
ain in the Venezuelan expedition, also, perhaps under stimulus 
of the German Emperor, to the discredit of Edward VII. But 
in extricating his country from the international difficulties of 
the Boer war, and in the present prudent position of England 
in its delicate situation in connection with the Russo-Japanese 
war, the wisdom of Edward is extolled. 

Edward the VII, during the past year must be given the 
credit for bringing about the agreement signed last April, 
which provided for a satisfactory settlement of all or most of 
the difficulties hitherto existing between England and France, 
and for drawing these two hereditarily hostile nations much 
closer together. 

One of the most satisfactory features of this settlement is 
the end of the long dispute between Erance and England over 
Egypt. For more than a score of years Erance has maintained 
theoretically that Great Britain should withdraw from Egypt, 
or at least set a definite date for withdrawal, and has been 
blaming the British administration for managing Egyptian 
finance as it deems best. Under the new treaty the French 
government declares that it will not obstruct the government 
of Egypt in England in any way and that it will assent to the 
proposed changes to be made in the revenues. This settles 
one standing source of quarrels between these nations. 



62 

The management of Egypt and of the Soudan by the Eng- 
lish during the past twenty years is one of the great and vast 
accomplishments of modern civilization. For a thousand years 
Egypt had been falling deeper and deeper into the slough of 
misrule, infertility, and financial hopelessness. What England 
has achieved to alter these conditions is one of the most bril- 
liant and hopeful facts of modern times and points to what 
might be done in Turkey and Asia Minor under similar eco- 
nomic management. 

When Egypt assigned for the benefit of her creditors it 
was freely prophecied that she could never be restored finan- 
cially. The fellaheen were groaning under impossible bur- 
dens of taxation and the dreary desert, with famine in its 
bosom, was encroaching every year upon the beautiful fields. 
Then came a modern Joseph. Lord Cromer wrought his won- 
drous administrative change. He built the Delta barrage, the 
new barrage on the Zammeita and another at Assouit, and con- 
structed the Assouan dam, 126 feet high at its deepest point, 
turning the river back upon itself for a distance of 140 miles. 
In twenty years he has spent $45,000,000 in irrigation and 
drainage, and has made the country prosperous.* 

Last year the revenues of Egypt exceeded the estimates 
by a handsome sum, the debt was reduced, the area under cul- 
tivation was greatly increased and the prosperity of the people 
advanced. It is said that Lord Cromer's expenditure of three 
and a half-million Egyptian pounds has done more good for 



*Mem:s is said to have made the first attempt to control the extreme 
high and low floods of the Nile. Lower and upper Egypt was more or less 
successfully irrigated by a system of diked terraces, and in these days was 
the granary of the Mediterranean. With the coming of the, Arabs, 700 A. D„ 
i ho deterioration began. By 1800 A. D. the population was reduced from 
L2.000.000 to 2,000,000, and the greater part of the Delta had become a desert- 
id swamp. But Mehammet Ali was sent to Egypt as Viceroy in 1S10. Me- 
Lammet tried to build the first barrage by dismantling the pyramids. This 
was impossible. Yet lime-stone quarries were opened near Cairo and foun- 
dations of the barrage were dug. But it was not until 1872, long after his 
death, that this first barrage was in a condition to be used. Ismail, the 
reigning Khedive, at once determined to extend the. system to Upper Egypt, 
and I lie following year, the great Ibrahimiyah Canal was dug giving per- 
petual irrigation to three provinces. But when the British came to occupy 
Egypt, the barrage, like the government, was in a wretched and decaying 
condition, and it has only been by Lord Cromer's efforts for a generation that 
the country has been restored. 



63 

the people of Egypt than the one hundred million pounds spent 
by the Ismail Pacha. 

It may not be generally known that Cairo is the headquart- 
ers of Moslem jurisprudence and orthodoxy, and possesses a 
university which for many years has been the principal seat for 
Mahometan learning, to which teachers, clergy and judges 
flock from even the most remote portions of Asia and Africa, 
in order to obtain the purest interpretation of the doctrines and 
law of the Koran ; and any decision reached here will be ac- 
cepted throughout the whole of Islam. 

It has been impossible ever to get the Moslems to deposit 
their moneys in bank. Mahometan countries have often been 
called grave-yards of gold because they swallow up this pre- 
cious metal and remove it from circulation. In India the 80,- 
000,000 prosperous Moslems have been continuously abstract- 
ing from the gold supply of the world to the amount of over a 
billion of dollars within the last forty years. It has been esti- 
mated that there are at least twenty million gold sovereigns 
that have been thus hoarded in the Presidency of Bombay 
alone, and the practice of the Mahometans has been extended 
to the Hebrews. All that the Christian nations can do through 
the discovery of gold mines to increase the supply of gold seems 
to be very ineffective in increasing its annual volume. Jew- 
els, too, which are more easy to conceal than gold, have found 
their graves in the Mahometan world in large quantities. But 
Lord Cromer, who has gained the confidence and respect of 
the Mahometans in Egypt, Soudan and India, because of his 
unblemished integrity as well as because of his deference to 
Mahometan prejudice, has this year had a number of inter- 
views with the Grand Mufti and other high authorities of Ismail 
law for the purpose of securing through them a more liberal 
interpretation of the Koran which deal with usury, so that while 
usury itself shall be prohibited, the followers of the prophet 
may be permitted to make use of banking institutions and re- 
ceive non-usurious rates of interest for their deposits. 

The Koran has all along strictly forbidden usury, and de- 
nounces it as one of the most unpardonable of offences. For 
more than twelve centuries the Mahometans have abstained 



6 4 

from lending money out at interest, and have never made use 
of hanking- institutions. But with the religious permission of 
Mahometanism for the populace of Egypt to deposit their 
hoarded millions in the banks, a much brighter period is likely 
to dawn in the history of Egypt. 

It was Disraeli who twenty-nine years ago purchased the 
Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal for the British government. 
This interest the United Kingdom would never relinquish. 
Gladstone plunged England into war and drove Bright out of 
the British cabinet in order to protect this investment. France, 
under the machinations of Bismarck, refused to work with Eng- 
land in this undertaking, and the most intense jealousy was 
awakened between these two lands. It is all this which has 
been removed during the past year. 

BUT the jealousy between France and Germany abides. 
The effort of France to destroy the Triple Alliance and 
isolate Germany was thwarted by William in a brilliant 
way when he just happened to call upon Victor Emanuel im- 
mediately before President Lon bet's widely heralded visit, and 
when William succeeded in drawing from the Italian King a 
public reaffirmation of the continuance of the existence of the 
Triple Alliance, and a public admission that the bonds which 
united the three countries were closer than ever before. 

We have reviewed at length the uncompromising attitude 
of President Combes toward the Pope. If we turn from this 
attitude of the foe of the German empire toward the Pope, to 
that of William II toward Rome, we shall find something very 
suggestive. Although a Protestant Sovereign, William has 
acquired an influence and favor at the Vatican and in the Cath- 
olic Church throughout the world to which no Catholic mon- 
arch, not even Francis Joseph himself, can pretend.* 

Perhaps the most important religious event in Germany 
during the year is the abrogation of the law by virtue of which 
the Jesuits were expelled from the German Empire in 1872, 
through the influence of Bismarck. This law has now been in 

*It has been publicly boasted that this has been done "without alienat- 
ing the good-will of his Lutheran subjects." 



65 

force for a whole generation, thirty-two years. Although the 
Redemptorists and the Holy Ghost Fathers were authorized 
to settle in the German Empire in 1894, the law of 1872 has 
remained unchanged up to this year. But on the nth of last 
March, the Reichsanzeiger published the following decree rati- 
fied by the Emperor: 

"We, William, by the grace of God, Emperor of Germany and King of 
Prussia, order in the name of the empire and in accordance with the de- 
cision of the Bundesrath and of the Reichstag, as follows: 'Paragraph 2 of 
the law of the 4th of July, 1872, concerning the order of the Society of 
Jesus is abolished.' Given at the Palace of Berlin the 8th of March, 1904." 

A Roman writer in a French journal, commenting on this 
imperial decree, says : "While France is driving Jesuits and 
other religious orders away, Germany is opening her doors to 
them ; while the eldest daughter of the Church wages upon 
Catholicism a war without mercy or respite, Protestant Ger- 
many protects Catholic interests, respects the Holy See, main- 
tains and increases the power of the clergy, and combats secu- 
larizing factions. France expels the congregations, Germany 
recalls them, and repeals old decrees that seem to her unworthy 
of a state claiming to respect individual liberty and solicitous 
of promoting the interests of the Fatherland. In France the 
Catholics are oppressed, in Germany they triumph." 

ON the 30th and 31st of last August a remarkable celebra- 
tion took place in Spires, Germany, in connection with 
the consecration of the splendid new Church built in 
honor of the Protestation of 1529. The streets of the city were 
decorated with flags and crowns, and the auditories in the 
new Church were completely packed with a mass of humanity. 
It was a great Protestant festival. 

The unveiling of the Luther statue in the Memorial Hall 
of the Church began the exercises. Luther stands in the at- 
titude of protesting; his eyes turned toward heaven, his right 
hand clenched, the Word of God in his left hand, and the Papal 
Bull under his feet. The unveiling was" by Prof. Gtimbel, who 
for nineteen years has been the heart and soul of this great 
building enterprise. The statue, it will be remembered, was 



66 

contributed by friends in America. An address was made by 
Mayor Schieren, of Brooklyn. 

The great assembly was held after the tolling of the five 
bells in the tower. Of the fourteen states who once had pro- 
tested, delegates were present from Nuremberg, Reutlingen, 
Rindau, Isny. Nordlingen and Heilbronn, together with repre- 
sentatives of principalities and of free cities, and of many asso- 
ciations, as well as delegates of fifteen universities. The 
Kaiser was conspicuous by his absence. He did not even per- 
sonally answer the telegram that was sent him, although on the 
1 2th of March, 1890, he had personally said to the deputation 
of the building commission, "Begin to build with confidence, 
and I will see to it that the work will be completed." 

About the time of the consecration the Kaiser sent a warm 
personal greeting to the Catholics in Regensburg! The 
speeches made at the evening consecration festival were of a 
historical order, and inspiriting. The main festival, held on 
the 31st of August, began with a procession starting out in a 
pouring rain from the Trinity Church, and passing between 
immense throngs of people. Every congregation in the Pala- 
tinate had sent one clergyman and a lay-representative to par- 
ticipate in this great Festival of Protestantism. Any one not 
a delegate was obliged to stand for hours before being able to 
gain an entrance to the Church. Dr. Dryander preached at 
10 o'clock on Heb. 10: 23-25. Pastor Wessel preached at 12 
on II Tim. 2: 19. Pastor Cantzeler preached to the children, 
at two o'clock, on II Tim. 1 : 5, and Dr. Decker preached the 
xmsecration Sermon. The ceremony closed late at night 
with the illumination of the Church, fire-works, and tolling of 
bells. The cost of the building was 2,127,660 marks. 

GERMAN Colonial expansion increases to a marked de- 
gree. This is particularly true in South America. Ger- 
many is increasing her trade more rapidly than North 
America. In large ocean going steamers, Germany is second 
only to Great Britain to which she is steadily catching up. Ger- 
many is working scientificially to secure foreign trade. She 
studies the desires and needs of foreign countries. She manu- 



6 7 

factures goods expressly for export, and educates the young 
people in technical and commercial schools. In 1903, the total 
increase in German trade with all America was over forty-one 
million of dollars, and that to South America was over twenty- 
nine million of dollars alone, and, in 1904, the result will prob- 
ably be more remarkable still. 

The Kaiser himself is deeply interested in commercial 
trade and industrial expansion. He has sought interviews and 
information from American captains of industry, and is credited 
with having invested the greater part of his fortune in industrial 
enterprises and with being a large stockholder in steamship 
companies. In his usual systematic manner he has prescribed 
commercial studies for his three youngest sons. 

The year has made it evident that the troubles of Germany, 
and of the German missions, in South Africa are of the most 
serious character. One of the results of the Boer war in South 
Africa seems to have been a loss of respect by the blacks foi 
the conquering white race, and some European journals pre- 
dict that Great Britain, Portugal and Germany may be face to 
face with a rebellion of the whole black race against a white 
rule. The situation is particularly serious in German South- 
west Africa. The imperial troops have failed to subdue the 
Herrors, the formidable tribe in the north of the colony, and 
as a result one race after another has revolted against the Ger- 
mans. The revolting tribes appear to be well armed. One 
German paper declares that Germany has lost every army of- 
ficer in this up-rising who knew anything of the war. In Ger- 
man military circles the mild rule of the German government 
and the leniency of the missionaries are charged as the cause 
of the insurrection, whereas, as a matter of fact, the poor mis- 
sionaries who are risking their lives, did their best to keep the 
natives in check by moral suasion. Fears are entertained in 
many quarters that the war will be one of extermination and 
that the male population will either be killed or driven away. 



68 

ONE of the most remarkable facts in Germany to-day is the 
unsettled condition of the intermediate educational prob- 
lems. The school question is causing intense agitation. 
For any one to point to Germany and the Germans, to-day, as 
a model for parochial and religious education would be to 
stultify one's self. The poor Lutheran Church (that is those 
sound in the Lutheran faith) is in embarrassment, because she 
cannot stand with either of the two great parties in the strug- 
gle. The one great party is that of the radicals and the ra- 
tionalists. The other great party is that of the state churches, 
with the Emperor at the head. Under this party the public 
school system of Prussia has been bound hand and foot under 
the two state churches, the Evangelical and the Catholic. With 
the receding of socialist and radical victories, reactionary meas- 
ures have become very strong in the German empire. The so- 
called school freedoms of the Prussian type, which have been 
adopted by a large majority, is a measure so retroactive in ed- 
ucation that ten years ago it would have seemed impossible in 
Germany. It is no longer safe for sound Lutheran parishes to 
send their children to parish schools. In Wuertemberg there 
has also been a very severe struggle between the Liberals and 
the Ultramontanes for the possession of the schools. The 
Evangelicals have come more and more to the conviction that 
the close connection between church and school, justified as it 
was in former times, can on longer be maintained. For the 
Ultramontanes are too strongly entrenched. Nearly all the 
Evangelicals have concluded that the influence of the clergy on 
flic sclwols should be zveakened, and the religious Minister Weiz- 
saecker, the son of the Tuebingen historian, is decidedly of this 
opinion. But the power of Roman princes in the govern- 
ment has negatived the endeavors of the Evangelicals. 

It is very evident that the school teachers of Germany, who 
are organized into associations, and who more and more resent 
the control of the clergy over their department, do not desire 
any supervision or direct relationship with the churches. This 
is an astounding fact. 

The Simultan plan introduced into Germany has caused 
a demand to be made there that even the religious instruction 



6 9 

in the schools shall be "Simultan," that is, shall be the same 
for Catholics, Lutherans, Jews and heathen. It appears that 
the Koenigsberg Association of teachers has requested that 
the teachers be freed from church supervision and be permit- 
ted to give religious instruction which shall be based on the 
moral truth inherent in all Confessions! The following is said 
to be one of the prayers from the "Modern School Prayers'" 
which one of the teachers' associations is using: 

"We will conduct ourselves with earnestness that the teacher need not 
•become angry. We will not speak, not make noise, not laugh, nor throw 
things on the floor. We will show ourselves attentive, diligent, ready to 
speak when asked, conduct ourselves in all respects in such manner that 
parents and teachers will be heartily pleased." 

We hope that America will be delivered from parochial 
and public schools in which human promises are hypocritically 
substituted for approach to our Heavenly Father in the name 
of Christ. 

FROM Germany to Hungary is but a short step. Here, 
too, the predominant problem is that of the schools. 
And the conflict, as usual, is between Protestants and 
Romanists. During the past year Tisza, the son of the Pro- 
testant minister of Hungary, was named as the Ministerial 
President. His advent was greeted coolly by the Clericals but 
enthusiastically by the Protestants, in whose interests he had 
determined to treat all legally established churches with im- 
partiality. The clericals used every effort to obstruct the Hun- 
garian Parliament, but he has successfully overcome all diffi- 
culties. 

There is a universal desire in Hungary for the establish- 
ment of a Protestant university. The lower schools are hav- 
ing their troubles. In 1869 the so-called inter-Confessional 
schools were introduced into Austria. In these schools the 
Church retained the right of supervision in religious instruc- 
tion, and the state the right of rule. There was to be a place 
for educating the children of all confessions without distinct- 
ion in order to make them citizens of one kingdom. Evan- 
gelical schools were declared to be private schools. As a con- 
sequence of this only those Evangelical congregations kept up 



7o 

their parochial schools who were determined to bear the 
double cost because they believed their own schools to be bet- 
ter than the public schools, or because they did not fully trust 
the new law. Ever since that time, Rome has been persistent- 
ly seeking" to undermine the Confessional equality which ob- 
tains in these schools. And, in 1883, she succeeded in passing 
a law that the school teacher must belong to the same religion 
to which the majority of pupils belong. This seemed to be a 
just and harmless provision. But the result was that the Evan- 
gelical teachers were removed from their positions, and 
though all citizens are paying for education the ruling spirit 
in them is strictly Roman Catholic. The children are taken 
into the Roman Church before they go to the school. The 
school building is dedicated by a Catholic priest. This conse- 
crated building dare not be profaned by*the holding of hereti- 
cal services. Several times a week the children are obliged to 
attend the Roman mass in procession, including Corpus Christi 
and other Roman holidays. In fact the inter-Confessional 
school law, which was intended to give equal rights to all, is 
now used altogether in the interests of the Roman Church. 
The instruction throughout Austria begins with a prayer, gen- 
erally the Lord's prayer, and then follows the greeting to the 
Virgin Mary, when the children make the cross. This is also 
demanded of the Protestant children. Roman hymns are used 
in the singing, and in many schools the Protestant children 
must participate. The national school board of Bohemia last 
year decreed that the children were expected to participate in 
the celebration of the mass, in the pilgrimages of the Church, 
and that it was the duty of teachers to see that they took part. 
If Protestant children should attend these schools, the services 
should not be intermitted, as such scholars are not obliged to 
participate in them. Recently a number of nuns were ap- 
pointed school teachers in these inter-Confessional schools and 
have become very influential. It is said that Protestant chil- 
dren have been ridiculed by the teachers, that books have been 
denied them, that they have been compelled to attend the Cath- 
olic instruction, to make the sign of the cross, to sing the Cath- 
olic hymns, and to hear their teachers tell them that Protest- 



71 

ants have no God. This is said to be the case in Vienna itself. 

However, the Away-from-Rome movement in the Ger- 
man provinces of Austria has not diminished in strength. 

In the first half of 1904 according to the report of the ec- 
clesiastical authorities in Vienna 2263 persons joined the Evan- 
gelical Church of which 2069 persons had been Roman Cath- 
olics. On the other hand in the same period, 566 persons left 
the Protestant Church, of which 511 became Roman Catholics. 
This shows a gain from the Roman Catholics of 1588 persons 
in six months. Of these about 253 were of the Reformed type, 
and the remainder adhere to the Augsburg Confession. Dur- 
ing the last six years 25,000 persons have been converted to 
Protestantism, and the Roman Catholic Church leaders and 
papers are beginning to combat the movement. For instance, 
a Roman Catholic journal in Bohemia has been publishing a 
series of articles in which Luther is made to appear as a drunk- 
ard. It then argues, Was Jesus a Protestant? No! Was Mary 
Protestant? No! Were the Apostles Protestant? No! Is then 
the faith of the Protestants the faith of Jesus? No! Great 
scandals are attributed to the Protestant Church, and every 
argument is used to appeal to the people. They are told that 
they will have to pay large amounts of yearly taxes for the 
support of the Protestant pastors, their wives and children, 
while on the other hand it costs nothing to keep a Roman 
Catholic priest and he charges nothing for his work among 
the poor. 

Very curious news from Germany reports it as the com- 
ing temperance nation. The. Imperial Health Office at Ber- 
lin is sending out elaborate literature against the use of alco- 
hol as a beverage. The Journal of the Imperial parliament 
prints pages of temperance arguments by the brother-in-law 
of the Emperor, one of the most prominent "temperance re- 
formers" in Germany. German University Professors are 
said to be leaders in this reform. Within the last fifteen or 
twenty years 871 books have been printed, and there are now 
$7 newspapers and magazines and annuals in this language 
devoted to the same, subject. At this rate German Americans 
who delight to speak of the fanaticism of temperance reform- 



72 

ers in the churches of America may, in a few years, find them- 
selves in a somewhat awkward position because of the situ- 
ation in the Fatherland. As the Kaiser takes a paternal in- 
terest in the welfare of his people, it would be a striking thing' 
if he should determine, that, though the Jesuits are admitted, 
beer must be exiled, — from Germany. 

AS in Germany, and in Hungary, and in France, and to a 
less extent in America, agitation on educational prob- 
lems is a leading political issue also in England. The 
question, at root, is the same throughout the world. Shall 
the state control the child, or the church? Or. as a political 
question, how can the state, the majority of whose members 
are Christian, with a minority that is not, and with the Chris- 
tians themselves divided, so use the moneys raised by tax- 
ation that the child will receive the education proper to a 
citizen, and not be brought up unbelieving and godless. We 
noted in our Survey of the year 1902 that the Anglican 
Church and its Clergy, by act of Parliament, had gotten hold 
of the whole school system of England, and if we mistake not, 
we pointed out at the time what the consequences of such a 
clerical usurpation would be. 

The result is as expected. Last summer Lord Rosebury 
declared that the government "has wantonly raised against 
themselves the whole body of non-conformist opinion in this 
country," and that it has brought to a head bitter questions 
that have lain dormant since Mr. Gladstone's Irish disestab- 
lishment bill of 1809. Lord Rosebury has probably not ex- 
aggerated facts. The Anglican Church in England has acted 
just as that part of the Episcopal Church which considers 
that it is the one thing needful to our American nationality 
and institutions, often acts in America. Throughout Eng- 
land the opponents of the Education Act have been engaged 
in systematic passive resistance. Every week from 1700 to 
2000 summonses are issued by London provincial magistrates 
to delinquent tax-payers who make it a matter of conscience 
to refuse payment of the school taxes. Those who refuse are 
ministers, great councillors, prosperous merchants and even 



n 

magistrates and members of Parliament. The whole pro- 
eeedings are conducted with great dignity, and no indignation 
meetings or exciting scenes are taking place. 

The rate-payers will not pay because of conscientious 
scruples against supporting what they consider dangerous re- 
ligious teaching. The. magistrates are forced to collect the 
arrears by law. Private property is seized and sold at auction 
and, in extreme instances, delinquents are imprisoned for 
short terms. That this is not a slight affair may be seen from 
the. fact that there have been over noo sales, and nearly 33,000 
summonses together with 33 sentences of imprisonment since 
the movement began. 

Throughout Wales the resistance is even more thorough. 
Under Lloyd-George, who is sacrificing his political future to 
this work, county and town councils have dismissed their 
teachers, schools have closed, all non-conformist children 
have been withdrawn from schools, and voluntary schools 
have been opened in non-conformist chapels. Thus there. 
are neither boards of managers nor teachers for conducting 
the government schools, and the whole system of elementary 
education, which is managed by the educational department 
in London, is most seriously embarrassed. 

Though the government may be harsh on these delin- 
quent tax-payers, the day of reckoning will come, and the 
sweeping away of the present Education Act is a foregone 
conclusion. But that does not settle the great question of 
the age, viz, What is to take its place? Lord Rosebury's 
remedy is that all schools supported by public money should 
be taken from the church control and placed under public con- 
trol ; and that, subject to that requirement, ministers should 
have free entrance to teach children of their own congrega- 
tion their own Creed. 

The American principle that public money can be given 
only for schools conducted on secular and undenominational 
principles is being quoted. Dr. Dale has asserted that the 
only solution is to be found in the absolute severance, of the 
official syllabus from religion in state supported schools. 



7A 

"This seems to be the path of moral justice, and what is 
morally right can never he religiously wrong." 

Thus again has the narrowness of that church whose 
priests believe that their religion is the only one that is fitted 
to become the governmental type, over-reached itself. 

FOR the last twenty years "the Protestant Episcopal 
Church" in this country has desired to change its name. 
The high church party does not like the word "Protest- 
ant." and others declare that this title is a misnomer. The Gen- 
eral Convention before the last appointed a committee "on 
change of name." and the following names, among others were 
proposed : "The Church." "The Church of America." ''The 
Catholic Church," "The American Catholic Church." "Ameri- 
can Church." "National Church." The committee has reported 
"that any change of the name of the Church at this time is in- 
expedient." This is the judgment of the laymen, though the 
priests of the Church would undoubtedly prefer a more im- 
posing, more exclusive and arrogative, and churchly designa- 
tion. 

During the past summer America "enjoyed a gracious 
visit" from the genuine archbishop of Canterbury, the Pri- 
mate of all England, and the chief jewel of the Episcopal 
Church. For the foundation of the See of Canterbury dates 
way back to A. D. 507. and St. Augustine himself is claimed 
as the first holder of it. while a number of Roman saints, in- 
cluding St. Thomas a Becket. who was murdered in the Cathe- 
dral of Canterbury 733 years ago. are among his successors 
In England the archbishop ranks next to royalty, having the 
'pas' over every one of the king's subjects, no matter whether 
duke, premier, lord high chancellor or secretary of state. 

The present archbishop is the 05th in the line of suc- 
cession. He lives in the stately Lambeth Palace in London, 
on the banks of the Thames, almost opposite the House of 
Parliament, which has been the metropolitan abode of the 
archbishops of Canterbury since the Twelfth century. Be- 
sides this residence, he has the use of an official residence 
within the cathedral precincts of Canterbury. He receives a 



75 

salary of $75,000 a year, which is only a drop in the bucket for 
the Anglican Church.* 

The archbishop lives in great state throughout the Lon- 
don season. His household is run on a princely scale. He 
lias gentlemen-in-waiting, chaplains, secretaries, purse-bear- 
ers and chamberlains. He gives entertainments and grand 
dinners and evening parties at the palace at least three even- 
ings a week, and shines in lavish expenditure and great 
splendor. 

The present archbishop in his personal appearance does 
not measure up to the stateliness of his position. He is in- 
significant to the eye. But he is keen of mind, and has 
an infinite amount of tact. He is now about 56 years of age. 
Though president of the Church of England Temperance So- 
ciety, he is not a total abstainer, but believes in the use of 
alcoholic beverages in strict moderation. It was through 
his efforts that the habitual Inebriate's Law was enacted in 
1901. His name is Dr. Randall Thomas Davidson. He might 
have had the office prior to the appointment of Arch- 
bishop Benson eight years ago, but then declined it. He has 
been very intimate with the reigning family, and until his 
elevation last year was the spiritual adviser to King Albert 
as he had been to Queen Victoria. 

His rise to his present position is enveloped in a curious 
romance. Shortly after leaving college he received a gun 
shot wound which threatened to make him helpless for life. 
By and by Archbishop Tait of Canterbury took an interest in 
him from sympathy, and made him his chaplain and then his 
secretary. This, very naturally, led to his becoming the 
Bishop's son-in-law. The rest of his history follows logically. 

Last May the Protestant Episcopal Church permitted an 
adoption of the. Monastic system within its borders by the 
dedication in West Park, New York city, of the Monastery of 
the Holy Cross. The placing, a few weeks later on, of a 
mural painting entitled The Epiphany in which the Virgin 
Mother is the most prominent figure, in the. Protestant Epis- 

*lts rich property is supposed to yield an income of about $40,000,000 a 
year, and is used in paying the stipends of archbishops and bishops, the 
salaries of minor dignitaries, and in improving buildings. 



7 6 

copal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in West 46th street, 
New York, is an indication of the growing power of the 
ritualistic idea in certain parts of Protestantism. In this 
painting the Holy Child is shown upon his Mother's breast, 
while, she is seated upon a raised Dais or Podium. Near 
Joseph, stands St. Anna, mother of the blessed Virgin, hold- 
ing the partly open book of the Prophecies. 

The services of this Church of St. Mary the Virgin have 
been noted for their similarity to those of the Roman Cath- 
olic Church. There are in it several confessionals, and on the 
walls the stages of the Cross. Suspended from the ceiling 
before the altar are vessels of ever burning incense. In the 
altar is a tabernacle for the preservation of the Sacrament 
after it has been consecrated for use. In the confessionals, 
confessions are heard and absolution is granted ; but con- 
fession is not obligatory. Connected with the church is a 
branch of the Order of the Holy Nativity and Sisterhood, 
whose members have taken the vow of celibacy for life. The. 
Church has two choirs; one a surpliced male choir occupy- 
ing seats in the chancel, and another a mixed choir stationed 
at the gallery in the rear. The mass is sung, the clergy wear- 
ing special vestments. At the High Mass the congregation 
does not receive the Sacrament. Candles and a gong are 
used, but the service, is entirely in English and is simply that 
of the book of Common prayer. The elevation of the host is 
practised. 

In Great Britain ritualism has apparently suffered a tem- 
porary check. The ritualistic controversies which have been 
going on since 1889 have resulted in the formation of a Royal 
Commission to investigate the reputed violations of the laws 
by the ritualists in the order of worship and in the fitting out 
of buildings. The. Commission is to draw attention to the 
laws already existing for the purpose of curbing irregulari- 
ties, and to propose new rules that may be necessary. It 
consists of fourteen members including the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, the. Bishop of Oxford, the President of the Bible 
Society, and the Church Missionary Society and some lawyers 



77 

and parliamentarians. No extremists seem to have been in- 
cluded in its make-up. 

The appointment of this Commission appears to be an 
attempt on the part of the government to oppose the grow- 
ing - Catholicization of the Anglican Church. The greatest 
difficulty it will encounter will be to determine, what acts are 
lawful. For the ritualists assert that they have the full right 
to interpret the thirty-nine articles and the Book of Common 
Prayer in their own sense and that thus the mass, the adora- 
tion of saints, prayers for the dead, the use of incense, etc., 
are permitted. But they are unable to deny that they ar^ 
violating the civil acts pertaining to the Church, particularly 
the so-called Public Worship Regulation Act. On this ac- 
count the ritualists long ago came to the conclusion that the 
Church should be. entirely free from the state. 

The high-church Church Times believes that the report 
of the Commission may result in the direction of a dissolution 
between church and state. But the Bishop of London evi- 
dently believes that the ritualistic movement is nothing but 
an over blown soap bubble, and that instead of 10,000 clergy- 
men and half of the bishops, out of the 22,000 in the Anglican 
Church, not more than a few dozen are leading the church 
toward Rome, and that the remainder of the 10,000 are the 
historical high church party of England, which has just as 
much right in the Anglican church as any other party. Never- 
theless, this governmental interference can be regarded as a 
successful move on the part of the anti-ritualists. 

It may not be generally known that the high-church party 
in England has been hoping to have the Anglican succession 
of Bishops and the Anglican ordination recognized by the 
Greek Church, and that an association termed the. "Eastern 
Church Association" has actually been formed for the fur- 
therance of this purpose. The association last spring pub- 
lished the letter of the Russian Holy Synod to the Oecumeni- 
cal Patriarchs on the attitude of the Orthodox church to 
Non-Orthodox confessions. 

The position taken is interesting to us Americans not 
only because of its views with regard to the Anglican Church, 



78 

but also because of its clear statements with reference to the 
schismatic position of the Roman Church. The position is 
as follows : 

The Western churches are one and all schismatic. The 
first step was the smuggling in of the filioque into the creed. 
After Rome had introduced the schismatic spirit by this act, 
she cannot complain of its spread: for Protestantism is only 
the logical development of the principle that the individual 
stands higher than the church. Thus is Rome herself, who is 
so fond of charging Protestantism with the spirit of secession, 
separation and division, laden with the charge of being her- 
self the. mother of all the offspring of schismatic Protestants. 

The letter divides non-orthodox Christianity into two 
parts, viz, Latin Christianity and the Protestants. But it dis- 
tinguishes the Anglicans from the Protestants. Curiously 
enough it charges Protestantism with laying more stress on 
external good works, and especially on social improvement, 
than on religious faith. Protestantism is also charged with 
fanaticism, and with a growing contempt of orthodoxy. It 
is supposed that the utterances of German University the- 
ology, with its wild conclusions, its prejudgments, and its 
pride of culture, has much to do with the formation of this 
estimate of Protestantism as a whole by the heads of the 
Greek Church. 

The Anglicans are absolved from all these Protestant 
sins (mirabile dictu). "Their love for our welfare," says the 
Russian Synod, "awakens also a love on our part nourishing 
in us the hope of a future, union." But the Anglican Church 
is given to understand that the High Church desire in this di- 
rection must first embrace the whole Church of Great Britain 
in its grasp and that the said Anglican Church must entirely 
give up any Calvinistic tendencies. 

THE Episcopal Church in this country, and indeed a great 
many people and denominations outside of that Church, 
have, within the last year, been giving renewed atten- 
tion to the. subject of divorces. There is no Christian country 
in the world where so many divorce processes are served as 



79 

in the United States. In 1902 the number of divorces granted 
was exactly double the. number granted in Germany and 
France taken together. In 1901 there were 61,000 divorces 
in the United States, while in the same year England had 
only 177 and Canada only 19. 

This state of affairs has not come on suddenly, but has 
been gradually gaining in strength for the last 20 or 30 years. 
Between 1867 and 1886 the average annual number of di- 
vorces was 16,436. In 1867, it was only 8939, whereas in 1896 
it already registered 25,535. Fifty or sixty thousand divorces 
a year would seem to be enough to ruin the soundest moral 
life of a nation. 

Last March an Interdenominational Conference was held 
in New York on the invitation of the Episcopal Church which 
was joined in by the Presbyterians who had five delegates, 
the Methodists three delegates, the Reformed Alliance three 
delegates, and the Baptists two delegates. A number of 
other denominations were also represented (excepting Uni- 
tarians, Universalists, and the Roman Catholics, which last 
church nevertheless expressed its sympatny with the move- 
ment by letter). The proceedings were behind closed doors, 
but the following resolutions were made public : 

Resolved, That in recognition of the comity that should exist between 
Christian churches it is desirable, and would tend to the increase of a spirit 
of Christian unity for each of the churches represented in this conference 
to advise, and, if ecclesiastical authority will allow, to enjoin its ministers 
to refuse to unite in marriage any person or persons, such ministers have 
good reason to believe are forbidden by the laws of the Church in which 
either party seeking to be married holds membership. 

Resolved, That the report of the committee on national and State leg- 
islation be recommitted to the committee for further inquiry and sugges- 
tion as to the best methods of securing such uniformity of law and usage 
among the churches as may tend to secure legislative harmony. 

Resolved, That the Executive Committee be authorized to prepare and 
issue in their discretion a declaration and appeal to the public as to the 
sanctity of marriage and the grave dangers of existing laxity in the fre- 
quency of divorces. 

The greatest difficulty which a good strict divorce law 
has to encounter lies in the fact that each one of the forty- 
five states has its own mamage laws, of which some are strict, 
others more free and others quite lax, as for example in the 



8o 

states of Rhode Island and Michigan. The Congress of the 
United Stairs lias no right to interfere with the divorce laws 

of the individual states. There seems to be nothing' to do 

but for the Churches to make stricter laws in marriage in 
doubtful eases, and to awaken the conscience of the people 
for the sanctity and permanency of the marriage vow. The 
Methodists and Presbyterians have approved of the action of 
the Conference. 

This matter has heen before the General Council for tin- 
last six 01* eight years. At Norristown the following action 
(with more still to come) was taken: 

Whereas, The great and Increasing disregard of the plain teaching of 
tlu> Holy Scriptures concerning the nature of the marriage covenant, de- 
mands the serious consideration of all Christian people, their most earnest 
protests against all violations of God's Law, and their hearty co-operation 

in all measures that would remedy the 'evil; 

Resolved, That we deem it the solemn duty of all pastors to Instruct 
their congregations concerning the permanency of the- marriage relation, 
and to warn against its violation or disparagement, as a crime against God, 
thai Cannot be mitigated ox apologized for by any defects of the, civic laws 
or any lowering of the standard prescribed In God's Word on the part of 
i lie community around them, or those who may be regarded leaders of 
public opinion. 

2. That this testimony should be given not only when some notorious 
violation of God's baw attracts general attention, but in frequent instruc- 
tions and admonitions from the pulpit, even where no occasion for it seems 
to be immediately urgent; and especially with all fidelity and earnestness 
in the instruction of catechumens. 

;'.. That we regard every pastor who performs a marriage ceremony as 
testifying, by that very act, that, so far as he has had the opportunity of 
discovering, after earnest endeavors to ascertain the facts, said marriage Is 
regular ami in accordance with God's Word; and that it is our conviction. 
further, that in invoking God's blessing upon the union, he becomes partici- 
pant in the gu.lt. if he be without reasonable assurance that both parties 
to tiie contract comply with the Divine requirements. 

4. That wo teach that the licenses, issued by the State, and compliance 
with every civil requirement, while indispensable, cannot of themselves be 
a gnult to the conscience of either pastors or individual Christians; anil the 
distinction bet ween the standards that avail before man and before God, 
Should never be forgotten. Nor can the State by its enactments and per- 
mission ever legitimate what the Word of Hod condemns. 

Till*- predominant importance of the subject of Education, 
both as a practical question for the rising generation, 
and also as a keen and sharp test of the nature of our 
civilization, has often been emphasized in these pages. And 



81 

we have frequently expressed the judgment that there is no 
more important question, technical or practical, before the 
Lutheran Church to-day. 

In the United States present educational ideals and ef- 
forts, as far as the higher education is concerned, seem to be 
projected on a quantitative basis. The great universities of 
America are running a swift pace with each other to increase 
the number of their students and professors and the amounts 
of their endowments. This year Harvard still leads in the 
race with nearly 6000 students. Columbia comes second 
with 4700 students. Chicago lines up third with 4400. Cor- 
nell follows with 3400 students. Yale is set down 20,00 
students, while Princeton and the State universities bring up 
the rear. 

One of the great events of the year in college life was 
the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of 
the. Columbia University at the end of October. The charter 
of the University was issued on a historical Lutheran day, 
viz, October 31st, 1754. It was given by George II. The 
name given to it was King's College. The President re- 
ceived a salary of $1125 a year, and the vestry of Trinity 
Church gave him an assistant at a salary of $750.00. 

The founders of the College did not wait until the char- 
ter arrived to begin their work, but at once chose an English 
minister by the name of Samuel Johnson as the. first Presi- 
dent. Already in the Spring of the year he made the follow 
ing newspaper announcement : 

To euch parents as have now (or expect to have) children prepared to 
be educated in the College of New York — it is proposed to begin tuition the 
first day of July next, in the vestry room in the new school houee adjoining 
to Trinity Church. 

The work began with eight students, who sat on wooden 

stools, placed at regular intervals along a crack in the floor, 

in the vestry room of Trinity Church. The names of the 

students are still known, viz: 

Samuel Verplanck, Rudolph Ritzema, Samuel Ritzema, Philip Van Oort- 
landt, Robert Bayard, Thomas Marston, Henry Cruger and Joshua Bloomer. 

The finances of the institution came from a public lot- 
tery, an act having been passed as early as 1746 for raising 



82 

£2250, which ten years later was increased to £6404, of 
which one-half was given to the College. The College also 
received £500 from the internal revenues of the state. The 
first commencement of the College is reported to have been 
more like a funeral than anything else, the speeches of students 
and professors being heavy and interminable. Church at- 
tendance on the part of the students was necessary as a mat- 
ter of law; and laughing, jostling or winking at public wor- 
ship was a punishable offence. There were prohibitions 
against fighting cocks, playing cards, dice, and any unlawful 
game. With the Revolutionary war the Tory name "King's 
College" disappeared, and the patriotic name "Columbia Col- 
lege" took its rise. The growth of the. Institution was slow, 
and in 1857, when it moved into its second home, it had only 
13 instructors and 172 students. In 1878 it had 94 instructors 
and 1400 students. In 1888 it had 203 instructors and 1700 
students. In 1890, under the Presidency of Seth Low, it be- 
came a university, and in 1898 it had 339 instructors and 2600 
students. At present it has 455 instructors and 4709 students. 
Seth Low reorganized the institution and has brought it in 
matter of size beyond all its older rivals, viz, Harvard, Wil- 
liam and Mary, Yale, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Washing- 
ton and Lee, excepting Harvard. It is connected with the 
Episcopal Church. 

The present 150th Anniversary is marked by the laying 
of the corner-stones of four more buildings, viz, the chapel, to 
cost a quarter of a million, the school of mines, to cost the 
same amount ; and two dormitories each to cost $350,000. It 
is said that the new buildings will increase the wealth of the 
University to nearly $30,000,000. How small, in comparison, 
is the educational effort of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania 
in spending $200,000 upon its buildings ! Some keen ob- 
server has remarked : 

The more Columbia gets the more it wants. Little old Columbia Col- 
lege of a generation or two ago seemed pretty well able and content to get 
along with the endowment which it had; hut when it joined the university 
movement and began to enlarge its borders and its work there was a dif- 
ferent story. Money came to it by millions, but still it needed and called 
for millions more. To-day it ranks, we believe, as the third richest insti- 
tution in America, and yet scarcely any other is more earnest and urgent 



S3 

in its calls for further gifts. Nor are those calls idle or unfounded. Co- 
lumbia needs more money. So does every university and college worthy of 
the name. The more it gets, the more it needs, for the reason that with 
every addition to its resources it increases its work and its liabilities to a 
still greater extent. That is the story. 

It is natural and inevitable that it should be so. The highest interests 
of the human mind and soul are not pecuniarily profitable in themselves. 
They cannot pay their own way. But they do pay the way of others, and 
they are objectively profitable in the highest degree. Columbia University 
cannot pay its own way as a business enterprise; but the instruction it has 
given in all these years has added to the money making power of the com- 
munity to a simply incalculable degree. To say that because of Columbia 
and its influence the wealth of New York has been increased by uncounted 
millions would be safely within the truth. It is upon that ground, if no 
other, that this and every other worthy institution has an unanswerable 
claim, in justice and in equity, to the most generous material support of 
the public. 

With greater endowments, more complete and more 
magnificent equipments, there comes also naturally a great 
increase in the luxury of college life, and a disposition to the 
enjoyment of the period of youth, as a holiday, and a season 
of elegant leisure. It is said that the average student in Yale 
University spends a thousand dollars a year, while at Harvard 
the average expenses are considerably higher. One great 
argument for the value of church colleges is that such ex- 
travagances are neither fashionable nor possible. President 
Roosevelt, himself a graduate of Harvard University, does 
not propose to allow his son to remain there for the full four 
years. He believes that the student should be under pres- 
sure and should get his education in the shortest time possi- 
ble, that he. should not dawdle along, spending time and 
money and dissipating when he ought be engaged in the seri- 
ous pursuits of life. He has given his son several years in a 
preparatory school at Groton, Connecticut, and has now put 
him under a private tutor for a year and will then expect him 
to take his degree at Harvard in three years. 

The recent expansion of Muhlenberg College into a first- 
class institution, up to the full limit of what should be ex- 
pected for young men who are to become the intellectual toil- 
ers and burden bearers of state and Church, is a matter for 
congratulation. Too long has the Lutheran Church delayed 
in the educational field. Now she has moved. Now the 



8 4 

loyalty of Lutherans to their own higher educational insti- 
tutions should be cultivated zealously and judiciously by 
those who hold in their hands the power of advice, and di- 
rection. 

The inauguration of the new President and the increase 
of the Professors in the Faculty of this Institution at the end 
of the College year, together with the entrance of the students 
into the new buildings during the present Christmas vacation 
should mark a great epoch in the educational history of our 
Church. For upon this educational Institution both the 
Home and the Foreign Mission Work of the Council and the 
activity of both the Chicago and the Philadelphia Theological 
Seminaries has to a large degree depended. 

At St. Louis, this year, the. meeting of the National Edu- 
cation Association which hoped to show an enrollment of 50,- 
000 persons and which was one of the 250 Conventions, many 
of them scientific or educational, which met at the St. Louis 
Exposition, might be termed typical, in one sense, of American 
intermediate education. 

The school exhibit of the Missouri Synod received the 
Gold Medal at the St. Louis Exposition. This is very high 
praise indeed, and it is deserved. Lehre und Wehre says it 
is the best refutation of the assertion which Dr. Haas made in 
The. Lutheran some years ago against congregational schools, 
that they are doomed to perish because they cannot accom- 
plish anything of such a thorough character as to be com- 
pared with the schools of the state. We do not recall any as- 
sertion of this kind by Dr. Haas, but we will here and now 
say that Missouri may win many a medal within the coming 
generation without disproving the statement that parochial 
schools of the regulation order are doomed to perish in this 
land. Let Missouri herself get one-half century older and 
then she will be in a better position to pass judgment on this 
point. We went through the Missouri Synod exhibit and 
State School exhibits at St. Louis with considerable care, and 
we know the strength and weakness of both. 

The question has been vigorously disputed, in view of cer- 
tain attacks of Cardinal Gibbons upon the public school sys- 



*5 

tern of America, whether denominational and church parochial 
schools produce a better type of moral character than the pub- 
lic schools. This is one of the favorite assertions of the advo- 
cates of German (and English) parochial schools in the Luth- 
eran Church, and we are not sure but that it is true. How- 
ever, it will not do to take the matter for granted, or hastily 
to approve the cry that "the godless public schools are rush- 
ing America to ruin." The parochial schools of this land, Lu- 
theran, and especially Roman, have their own tendencies and 
peculiarities toward moral weakness, which could be described 
if necessary, and which form an element in the sober considera- 
tion of educational problems. 

In view of the charges made by Cardinal Gibbons, nine- 
teen college presidents are said to testify almost unanimously 
that the moral character and conduct of public school boys is 
quite as high as that of boys from religious or other private 
schools. 

The President of Cornell University gives figures to show 
that the public school actually produces a larger percentage of 
church members than the private schools. He says that from 
a system of inquiry in use, he has learned that 6$ per cent, of 
the young men coming to his university from the public schools 
declare themselves to be church members, while only 56 per 
cent, coming from private schools make such declaration. He 
continues : "The fact that practically two-thirds of our freshmen 
who come from the public schools are church members is a 
conclusive refutation of the allegation that the public schools 
are breeding an irreligious, immoral and anarchical class of citi- 
zens." This same President of Cornell, in completing his 
statement, makes one of the most important remarks that we 
have ever yet seen emanating from the head of an American 
University. He says: "I do not believe the American people 
will ever consent to vote public moneys for denominational 
schools. But I see no reason why voluntary arrangements 
should not be made by the clergy of the respective localities 
for the systematic religious instruction of children in the public 
schools under such conditions of time and place as the school 
authorities might permit, the attendance of pupils at such in- 



86 

struction, of course, to be wholly optional." This remark is 
important not because the method proposed cannot be im- 
proved on, but because a great secular educational authority 
here recognizes the need and the right of the Church to give 
systematic instruction to its own rising generation. 

Last year the Mosley educational commission visited 
America in the interests of English education, and the report, 
which is now out, makes some comparisons. It declares that 
in America "the teachers seem filled with enthusiasm and there 
is a thirst for knowledge shown by pupils which is largely lack- 
ing in England." "The average American boy when he leaves 
school is better fitted for his vocation and struggle in life than 
the English boy." The fact that struck the Commission in 
going through the public schools was the success attained in 
making the scholars self-reliant, in bringing out their indi- 
vidual qualities, and teaching them to reason. "In some re- 
spects this seems to be the most important factor in all Amer- 
ican education, and largely accounts for the success of the pu- 
pils in after life." Another striking fact was "the large pre- 
ponderance of women teachers in all branches of education 
throughout the country. Personally I should favor the em- 
ployment of female teachers for boys and girls up to the age 
of say. twelve years : for the reason (as it appears to me) the 
woman claims the sympathy of children in younger years and 
understands the working of their minds in a way and to an ex- 
tent that no man can. Beyond this point, however, I am in 
favor of turning the pupils over to a man ; here, if I may say 
so. American education in my view requires some overhauling. 
Not only did I find comparatively few men engaged in teach- 
ing, but also few preparing to become teachers ; and upon fur- 
ther investigation I discovered the reason to lie in the small- 
ness of the remuneration. This is a serious defect." This is 
a corroboration of the principle for which our German Synods 
have, rightly, been standing in education. What the growing 
youths and maidens of church and state need, in this free land 
especially, in Sunday school, parochial and secular school, after 
they reach a certain age, is a schoolmaster. 



87 

THE Religious Educational Association has published 
that out of 946 superintendents of public schools in all 
parts of America 454 superintendents have reported 
that the Bible is read in all their schools, 295 superintendents 
have reported that the Bible is partly read in their schools, and 
only 197 superintendents have reported that it is not read at 
all in their schools. That is the Bible is read, at least in part, 
in four-fifths of the schools. Another report shows that out 
of 808 cities, 651 use the Bible in public schools. In 157 cities 
there were no religious exercises, and in "jj cities they were 
forbidden. In 53 of these cities prayer was used. In only 99 
cities was it forbidden to explain the sections of the Bible that 
were read. 

The Missouri Church assumes that it is a breach of the 
Golden Rule to justify the taxing of Roman Catholics for pub- 
lic schools in which the Protestant's Bible is read. One might 
as well say that it is a breach of the Golden Rule for the United 
States to tax those of its citizens who were opposed to the 
Spanish and Philippine war for the payment of the expenses 
incurred by this war. Or one might say that it is a breach 
of the Golden Rule for the state of Pennsylvania or New York 
to tax bachelors, who have no children, for school purposes at 
all. Or one might as well say that it is a breach of the Golden 
Rule to justify the taxation of property belonging to women, 
for municipal purposes, from a voice in which women are ex- 
cluded by their inability to cast a ballot. It is right and proper 
in all these instances for the minority to pay taxes to be used 
as the will of the majority may decide, provided that in none 
of these instances the minority itself be forced against its own 
conscience to make use of the improvements thus provided ; 
and, if we were a Papist, or bachelor, or a woman, we should 
feel thankful to the state for the. introduction of even a little 
Christian religion into the public schools, not because of its 
influence on the souls, but on the citizenship of the pupils. A 
Christian citizen, whether he be. a Methodist, a Roman Cath- 
olic, or Congregationalist, is a better citizen and of more 
value to the state than an atheist. 

We are among those v/ho believe that America is a Chris- 



88 

tian nation both by extraction and history, and also by ma- 
jority ; and that if the President of this country affirms that 
things are done "In the year of our Lord" 1904, the teachers 
of our country may and should use the name of our Lord in 
their prayers, and that the church is giving- away a most valu- 
able heritage, by consenting to allow the state, "the vicar of 
God," to be regarded under the rationalistic conception 
of "a neutral." In our judgment, minorities must yield to the 
majority, and while special care should be taken to give fullest 
religious freedom to even the smallest minority, and to per- 
mit and encourage religious exercises of their own for mi- 
norities and to excuse them from the religious exercises of the 
majority, yet the fact that there, is a known non-Christian mi- 
nority in the land should not oblige the Christian religion and 
Christian training to be excluded from the public schools. 

SECRET Associations in America, we regret to say, have 
had a flourishing year. The newer orders in particular 
have been spreading through the land. One of these 
orders, that of the Elks, is especially harmful to the Church, 
in its religious, social and moral point of view. Its funeral 
service is almost a travesty on a sound morality and religion, 
and its annual services of tribute to the dead, for which some 
ministers can always be found to deliver addresses, and which 
are generally held on some Sunday afternoon toward the end 
of the year, are notable for their open defiance of Christian 
teaching with respect to death and judgment. At one of the 
rhetorical addresses delivered in Philadelphia this year, the 
memorial speaker said, "Not with funeral balm and the minor 
form of grief, but with music and eulogy we mourn through 
resurrected radiance. Brotherly love should rule the world. 
Then there will be no more crime. We are progressing. The 
altruistic decree of 'Live and let live' has been changed to 'live 
and help others to live.' " 

Another order of remarkable growth is the fraternal order 
of Eagles. It is said to have been formed in 1898 by five 
men in Seattle, Washington, and is stated to number 300,000 
men, and, if the recent rate of growth continues, will before 



-89 

long reach a million. The five men who organized the order 
met in February, 1898, on Sunday. They were all connected 
with the management of variety theatres. They gathered on 
succeeding Sundays with headquarters in the theatre and ini- 
tiated new members. The order has swept through the West 
and then came into the East. 

The secret orders are not the allies, but the enemies of 
the Church. An article in the December Arena, just out, is 
written to disprove this statement. It takes exception to the 
recent stern attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward 
Free Masonry, and exhibits both of these ancient organiza- 
tions (it says, The Roman Catholic Church has a history of 
two thousand years, but Masonry antedates Catholicism "far 
beyond the apprehension of finite minds") as divine brothers 
who should walk hand in hand on the same pathway : 

"Brothers all are the members of the two organizations, one in the es- 
sentials of rectitude and righteous living, making towards the same humani- 
tarian and spiritual ultimate Therefore, as 'Brother Soldiers' let us salute. 
And as Knights and Companions of the true Cross, let them join in the bat- 
tle for Truth, Purity, and for Peace, ready to fight, and if necessary to die 
for the Rig^i." 

We would be interested in seeing the Roman Church re- 
turn this brotherly salute! The Arena claims that there was 
a time when there was no prohibitive injunction in the Roman 
Church against Masonry, when the District of Columbia had 
for its first master a devout Roman Catholic, Captain Hoban, 
of Dublin, the architect of the nation's capital and the White 
House. This writer claims that originally "America was fron- 
tiered and bulwarked with the spirit of Masonry. Out from 
its living hearts sprung those sentiments and principles of true 
liberty and impartial laws which led to the formulation of the 
Declaration of Independence." He does not cite Thomas 
Jefferson as a member of the Masonic Order, but he mentions 
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and 
states definitely that "the generals who commanded the Revo- 
lutionary forces, together with four-fifths of those who signed 
the Declaration of Independence, were Masons." He men- 
tions that very strange fact, viz., that Roman Catholics are 
permitted to join the Society of Elks, the Odd Fellows, the 



9° 

Maccabees and others. We are curious to know whether the 
writer of this article is in good standing- in the Roman Catholic 
Church ; also the reason why that Church admits an Elk and 
excludes a Mason : and whether the broad assertions made 
concerning - the universality of Masonry in connection with the 
origin of our free institutions are correct. 

Tn Europe it is well known that the members of royalty 
are connected with the Masonic Craft. Edward the VII, the 
German Emperor and King Oscar of Sweden were all Masons. 
Erederic the Great of Germany with both of his successors 
were Masons. Tn Erance King Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, 
Charles X. King Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. were 
Masons. 

But the present reigning Monarchs have found it neces- 
sary to withdraw from lodges to which they belonged. The 
German Emperor and King Oscar have taken steps to sever 
their connection with the Craft. During the last year of 
Queen Victoria's reign. King Edward as Grand Master of the 
English Rite was obliged to denounce the French Masons be- 
cause they had instituted an Atheistic Masonic lodge in Eng- 
land. For the grand Orient of France in 1877 banished the 
Almighty from its lodges, and excluded from its ceremonies all 
reference to the grand architect of the universe. A few 
weeks after the accession of Edward the VII. among the ear- 
liest petitions received by him was one by a large number of 
Turkish Free Masons, calling on him to use his influence to 
secure the freedom of the ex-Sultan Murad who has been im- 
prisoned for the last quarter of a century at Constantinople by 
his younger brother, the present Sultan. This principle of 
brotherly help works against justice as often as for it. 

OF the many sad tilings that occurred to shroud weeping 
hearts in sorrow, during the year 1904. we have space 
to mention but a few. New Year's day itself opened 
with a dreadful disaster. Chicago was draped in mourning. 
Five hundred and eighty-two beings lost their lives in attend- 
ance at the Iroquois theatre. The attempt of the clergy to 
prove this a Providential punishment upon theatre goers was 



91 

not very successful under the sarcastic remarks of the secular 
press. The truth is that Providence was working- then, as al- 
ways ; but was working in mystery, as is God's wont. The 
Saviour's Word concerning the tower of Siloam is the key to 
a proper interpretation. The fact that this disaster cannot be 
proven to be a direct punitive visitation of God, or that the 
medium of visitation was human negligence or crime, does 
not at all prove that theatre going is not wrong, nor that pun- 
ishment was not visited on some or all of those theatre goers. 
On the other hand, the fact that the people in the theatre were 
good, or respectable, and that many more wicked than those 
escaped this fate, does not prove that justice and punishment 
will not in due time be meted out to all. Finally, the fact that 
good people were taken away from life in a doubtful place, 
while it bears its warning, cannot be used in a wholesale way 
by the Church of Christ to decide on the fate of these people. 

Early in February a mighty outburst of fire ate out the 
heart of Baltimore's business district ; the loss is said to have 
surpassed that of the great Chicago fire in 187 1, and of the 
Boston fire in 1872. We believe that has run to almost two 
hundred millions of dollars. None of our churches were di- 
rectly affected by the conflagration. 

Few horrors have ever shocked the American world so 
thoroughly as that which was connected with the burning of 
the General Slocum, with over a thousand Lutherans on board, 
in the East River, New York, last June. It has been said that 
even Herod himself could not have devised a more awful fate 
for the hundreds of women and children that lost their lives 
on this steamer. Raising the question of Providence, our dear 
friend and co-worker, the Rev. Dr. G. C. F. Haas, who lost 
his own dear ones (including a little daughter, a special friend 
of the writer), and came near losing his life, the great bulk of 
whose congregation was swept at one stroke into the other 
world, made a notably strong and effective reply to unbeliev- 
ers, and a very powerful contribution to apologetics, in the 
words that sprang, in the depths of his stricken soul, from the 
faith in which he has hitherto lived. He was indeed a hero. 

It was the greatest disaster that ever appalled the metrop- 



92 

olis. The President ordered a rigid investigation and ap- 
pointed a committee of five prominent persons including mem- 
bers of the army and navy and of the departments of corpor- 
ations and commerce and labor for this purpose. They found 
that out of a total list of 1358, 955 persons lost their lives, 
while 175 persons were injured. The Commission is very 
severe in placing the moral and legal responsibility on the 
owners of the vessel and the crew. 

In less than a month later the Danish steamer "Norge," 
bound for New York, foundered off the coast of Scotland and 
the majority of the crew, 774 souls in all, perished. It is said 
that if the vessel would have been built within the last ten years 
and with the improved bulkheads she would probably have 
made a port. The vessel was afloat only twenty minutes after 
striking. The captain went down with his ship, but was sub- 
sequently rescued. 

IF we turn from disasters to deaths, the year has much to tell. 
Last July it was just one century since Alexander Ham- 
ilton fell before the pistol of Aaron Burr on the shores 
of the Hudson. The work of Hamilton for America, and his 
invaluable aid to Washington, have not been fully appreciated. 
He was not merely a good soldier and brilliant lawyer, and 
great financier, but he stood for that in statesmanship which 
has to-day rendered America a nation rather than a congeries 01 
quarreling commonwealths. Talleyrand, a good judge of men 
pronounced Hamilton the greatest man of his epoch. Neither 
Hamilton nor Jefferson dreamed of a state dependent on uni- 
versal suffrage (something given to America by the democ- 
racy of Jackson). Nevertheless his ideas of nationality have 
been followed out by our American government. The begin- 
ning came with the annexation of Louisiana which transformed 
the country from a confederation into a national sovereignty. 
The long line of Chief Justice Marshall's decisions was a vic- 
tory for the principles of Hamilton, and the Civil War con- 
firmed the work begun by him. Hamilton laid the foundations 
of our commercial and revenue systems, and, despite his sins, 
deserves to be held in great gratitude in this land. 



93 

The death of Isabella, the deposed queen of Spain, this 
year, takes us back to the history of the nineteenth century. 
Inheriting the proud crown of Leon and Castile, she became 
the centre of the stormiest scenes of modern Spain — the Carlist 
wars, the last effort to unite the French and Spanish crowns, 
the revolt of the Spanish people, and the establishment of a 
short-lived republic. Our readers may recall that the candi- 
dacy for her vacant throne was made the pretext for the war 
which turned France into a republic, and united Germany into 
an Empire. After her own exile she had the satisfaction of 
seeing" her son and grandson ascend her throne. She was a 
wicked woman, with a kind heart and a generous nature. 

On the 12th of last August, the death of M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, the greatest of French advocates and prime minis- 
ters and the saviour of the Third Republic, took place. The 
real career of Waldeck-Rousseau began in June, 1899. And it 
was only three years in length. But it was the longest on 
record in the history of the present Republic. In the six years 
preceding it there had been no less than nine ministers. Wal- 
deck-Rousseau, when France was in great confusion because of 
infamous wrong, including a corrupt military caballe and the 
scheming of a fanatical clericalism, took the French portfolio, 
and reopened the Dreyfus case. He crushed the intrigues of 
the army and the clergy so thoroughly that little has been 
heard of them since. But he did more: He cured France of 
her capriciousness in administration and convinced her of the 
advantages of a stable cabinet. Waldeck-Rousseau was one of 
the most eloquent oratorical advocates in France, not fervid 
and flowery, of the style of Gambetta, but perfect in form, fault- 
less in logic, and often cold. At heart he was tender and 
gentle, like many public men, and his distant bearing was due 
to a secret timidity which surrounded him with reserve in 
public. 

On July 14th Paul Kruger, the former president of the 
South African republic, died in exile at Clarens on Lake Ge- 
neva, Switzerland. Flow quietly this sturdy old Dutch Presi- 
dent, seated at his front door in Pretoria, pipe in mouth, Bible 
on knee, an elephant gun in hand, has disappeared from the 



94 

page of history! He has missed a martyr's fame and fate. 
That he transported the bulk of his fortune out of the country 
and left it in its dying position did not add to the respect of 
the world for him, nor did he enjoy the life of a deposed ruler. 
The absoluteness of his rule, which he believed was from God, 
and inspired of God in every detail, so that a word or blow 
against him was not only treason against the Transvaal, but 
blasphemy against the Anointed of the Lord, was a remark- 
able thing. In many respects he was like unto a patriarch 
of the old type, and in others he has been compared with the 
Judges of Israel who slew the tribes of Canaan that God's peo- 
ple might enter in, and who ruled as with a rod of iron. 

On the day of his death A Last Appeal in behalf of the 
Boers was circulated through Germany, imploring the German 
people to aid the downtrodden nation in the establishment of 
parochial schools, for the Christian training of their orphaned 
youth. It appears that the English government does not pro- 
pose to allow the state schools to be used for this purpose by 
the Boers. The Church has consequently organized its own 
schools, over two hundred in the Transvaal alone. From 
60,000 to 80,000 marks will be needed to accomplish the pur- 
pose. The funeral expenses of Kruger will be borne by Eng- 
land, it is said. 

Sionism has lost its leader, Dr. Theodore Herzel, of Vi- 
enna. His death was an ovation to his ideas. In eastern Eu- 
rope he was regarded as a Messiah. But he died at the op- 
portune moment. His scheme, especially in view of the Sul- 
tan's definite opposition to Herzel's settlement of Palestine, was 
visionary. His plan of Uganda only served to conceal the 
failure of the original scheme. Nevertheless he has reached 
a high stage of historical significance by his influencing great 
heads of the earth, the emperor, the sultan, the pope. As one 
born to rule, though he was but a simple journalist, by his per- 
sonal appearing, his writings, his agitation, his colonial pro- 
jects, his Zion, he has awakened the national Jewish feeling in 
a manner that will long be felt. He has given the Jews a con- 
sciousness of national unity, and he has done for them in a less 
degree what Cavour did for the Italians, or Bismarck for Ger- 



95 

many. He is one of the spirits of the nineteenth century who 
wrought for national unification. 

Among other men of affairs who died during the year 
were Prince Herbert Bismarck of Germany, and ex-Governor 
Pattison of Pennsylvania ; James T. Lewis, one of the war gov- 
ernors ; and a former premier of New South Wales. 

Sir William Harcourt, who died in England early this 
Fall, was one of the historic figures of the British House of 
Parliament. He has been called "the last of the Whigs." 
Though he played the part of a democrat, he was an aristocrat 
as far as family pride was concerned. But if he could not 
sympathize with the spirit of his grandfathers, he also despised 
the crew who entered the Parliament in search of titles or to 
get into society. It has now been nearly six years since he 
retired from the leadership of the Liberal party in England. 
His letter to Mr. John Morley, announcing his retirement, may 
still be remembered for its vigor. But he remained in the 
House of Commons as a great personal power. His scholar- 
ship, his legal learning, his nimbleness of wit, his editorial skill, 
his vigor of debate, made him an effective if not an oratorical 
speaker. He was a tower of strength in his party, one of its 
wisest and most authoritative counsellors. But, he had drop- 
ped out of the ranks as a political force. He was one of those 
men, sitting on the front bench in the House, who in difficul- 
ties, in excited debate, would rise and recur to the annals of the 
last half-century or bring forth some clearing principle from 
the mazes of international law. 

Early in October, the death of Senator Hoar took place. 
Entering Congress in 1869 he has served there continuously 
ever since. He always had to be reckoned with as a force in 
legislation and in public policy. He was fearless, intelligent, 
enthusiastic and had great confidence in the rectitude of his 
own opinions. He believed that his views represented the 
correct position of the American people. We cannot say that 
we always admired Senator Hoar. 

The second week in August, Senator George G. Vest, 
whose public activities have covered nearly half a century, 
dropped from the ranks. At thirty-three years he was sena- 



96 

tor in the Confederate Congress, and at seventy-three he had 
been in the United States Senate for twenty-four years con- 
tinuously. He was a trusted and influential, intellectual 
leader of the South. He had spoken for the South in i860 in 
the Missouri Legislature, fought for the South, and had been 
elected to the Confederate Congress, but he accepted the con- 
stitutional results of the war, throwing himself particularly 
into the crusade against protection. He was a true Cobdenite, 
and an enthusiastic advocate of free silver coinage. 

On the 7th of last July, General Howard, of the Confed- 
erate Army, and a veteran of five wars was taken by death ; 
and on the first week of August, the wife of General Nelson 
A. Miles was taken in the same way. On the second week in 
November Paul Cassagnac, the Bonapartist deputy and well- 
known journalist, died in Paris ; and on the first week of Oc- 
tober F. A. Bartholdy, the French sculptor and designer of 
the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, died in the same 
city. On the second week of July the Golden Rule Mayor of 
Toledo, Samuel M. Jones; and on the last week in July Rear 
Admiral Taylor, chief of the Bureau of Navigation ; and James 
N. Galvin, the newspaper man who unearthed the St. Louis 
boodle scandals, died. 

Among inventors and men skilled in the technical arts, 
were Robert Schwarzenbach (died July 2d), head of the largest 
steel manufacturing business in the world ; John N. Jones, 
who is said to have made in 1855 the first typewriting ma- 
chine in this country ; Charles H. Mosley, in Brooklyn, the 
first dentist who used nitrous-oxide gas ; in September, in Chi- 
cago, Mr. Haskins, the inventor of the multiple telephone 
switch board ; and in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Mr. Pollack, 
Ericsson's chief assistant in the reconstruction of the Monitor ; 
in Brooklyn Henry Waterman, the inventor of the steel strap 
pulley block ; in New York, G. W. Pach, the widely-known 
photographer, and General George Smithwick, for a long time 
Superintendent of the Harper's Art Engraving department 
and recently of the Ladies' Home Journal. Mr. Cornelius 
Shields, who has figured very largely during the past year as 
the manager of the Lake Superior Corporation, a financial 



97 

concern that brought great losses to many of the smaller in- 
vestors, died early this Fall. 

Among clergymen and lecturers we find the death of Dr. 
Leonard Moss, a prominent Baptist lecturer and editor, in the 
second week of July ; Colonel Copeland, a famous Lyceum lec- 
turer, in the third week of July. In the second week of Au- 
gust Prof. Frederic Ratzel, the eminent German geographer, 
died in Leipzig, and in the last week of August Prof. Charles 
W. Shields, of Princeton, died. Prof. Shields was a widely 
read and erudite philosopher, the author of "The Final Philoso- 
phy." His work in these fields was always esteemed very 
highly by Dr. C. P. Krauth. The first week in October S. F. 
Upham died in New Jersey. In September Rev. Dr. G. C. 
Lorimer, pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, and 
author of a number of volumes, died unexpectedly. During 
this Fall Archbishop Elder, of Cincinnati, died in his 86th year. 
He was a fluent speaker and possessed a facile pen. He passed 
herocially through the yellow fever epidemics in Mississippi, 
and was transferred to Cincinnati in 1881 to straighten out 
the unfortunate financial situation brought into this bishopric 
by Archbishop Purcell. 

Turning to men of art. we think first of all of the death 
of Bohemia's great composer, Antoine Dvorak, by apoplexy, 
on the first of last May. Like most great composers, Dvorak 
was of humble origin, his father being a butcher and inn- 
keeper near Prague. At sixteen he was playing a violin in 
Prague at $8 a month. In 1883 the performance of his Stabat 
Mater in London attracted a great deal of attention and he 
was brought to New York in 1892. Dvorak is regarded as 
having done for Bohemian music what Liszt did for the Hun- 
garian, Chopin for the Polish, and Grieg for the Norwegian. 
He was spontaneous and inexhaustible as a melodist, as also 
was Schubert, his model. He was influenced by Brahms, 
Liszt and Wagner, but the beauty of his song is its fresh, un- 
expected, and inexhaustible orchestration. 

England has had two great painters die this year, Blake 
and Watts. Blake was an idealist to whom the body was the 
symbol of the soul. The image of fire was a constant haunting 



presence to him, running linos of water, the gestures and atti- 
tude of the body or the trembling of lines, was an enhancement 

to his spirit. Watts was a painter who embodied moral and 
religious lessons in his work, and who had an extraordinary 
genius. All that ho did hail a certain relation to God. The 
lust week in August Robert C. Minor, a landscape painter, 
died at Waterford. 

^mong men of letters who died during the year was the 
young man's friend. Dr. Samuel Smiles, in London, April 
10th. at the age of 92. I lis hook. "Self-Help," was commer- 
cially one of the most remarkable publishing successes of the 
Nineteenth Century and has keen translated into a score of 
languages. "Duty," "Thrift.'* and "Character" followed from 
die same pen. Mr. Smiles was the son of a Scotch country 
doctor, and his mother was a widow with eleven children to 
educate. He himself was a surgeon, an editor, a railroad 
clerk, and finally he gave himself to authorship. 

About four weeks later, the death of Henry M. Stanley, the 
African explorer, took place in London. Stanley made three 
great expeditions to Africa between 1S70-1S00. and lived to 
see his routes through the forest threaded by the telegraph and 
traversed by steamer and locomotive. It has been said that 
Stanley was not a conquest seeker like Cortez. Pizarro. Cabot 
and Columbus. Though he carried the Stars and Stripes 
through the heart of the dark continent, he never once planted 
it there. But he went armed, and not as a missionary like 
Livingstone. He opened the way for commercial development 
and for the partitioning of Africa. 

In September the wife of William Cullen Bryant died 
in Connecticut, and in November Mrs. Will Carlton, the wife 
of the poet. 

On November 20th W. M. Paxton, of Princeton, died in 
his Si st year, after a two weeks' illness, caused by a paralytic 
stroke induced by overexcitement in attending the Yak- 
Princeton football game. 

The third week in December L. Clarke Davis, for many 
years editor of the Public Ledger, died suddenly of heart dis- 
ease. He was the husband of Rebecca Harding Davis and 



99 

father of Richard Harding Davis, the novelist and war corre- 
spondent. He was a close friend of President Cleveland. As 
a youth lie was brought up in a boarding school at Norris- 
town. He became the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 
1869, and nearly twenty years later under George W. Childs 
he became the editor of the Public Ledger, succeeding W. 1 1 . 
Keene. Davis was a writer of energy and experience, and had 
regard for "the broad round of human interests." He nearly 
always stood on the right side morally, but the religion of the 
Public Ledger, especially in later years, was of a very humani- 
tarian character, and "broad" enough to include the Semites 
within its fold. 

On the 24th of last March Sir Edwin Arnold, the oriental 
writer, author of The Light of Asia, and The Light of the 
World, died in London in his seventy-second year. As a 
young man, Arnold was a Liberal, and was sent by his party 
to India as the Principal of Poona College. He here laid the 
foundation of his oriental studies, becoming a master of San- 
scrit. He began to publish his writings as early as 1853. In 
1862, he brought out a history of the administration of India 
during one of its Governors. After his return to England he 
became the editor for the London Telegraph, and he said that 
the hardest work of his life was done on a daily newspaper, "I 
have written more than eight thousand editorials." 

He was of a nervous temperament and a stout muscular 
physique, and always bright and entertaining. For many 
years he wore a black silk skull cap well down over his fore- 
head. 

His Light of Asia was published in September, 1878, with 
little expectation of its making a stir. His Light of the World 
was published in 1890. He always expressed his love for 
Japan, and after that for the United States, and this may have 
caused him a loss of the Poet Laureateship. He was mar- 
ried three times, the last time in 1897 to a Japanese woman. 
In 1901 he was stricken with blindness and had troubles that 
brought gloom into his declining years. We cannot say that 
his influence, with the impetus that it gave to the study of com- 

1 -re. 



IOO 

parative religion and the exaltation of what is good in Orien- 
talism, was wholesome. 

Sir Leslie Stephen, the great English critic, who died early 
in the year, broke away from the Evangelical religion of his 
family in early days, and joined the party of Clifford and Mill 
and Spencer. He is noted for his patient study of the Eigh- 
teenth Century Life. He was editor of the Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography, and president of the British Ethical Society. 
It is said that "conduct meant, for him, three-fourths of life." 
He composed an apology for agnosticism and was noted as a 
powerful periodical writer on its behalf. Death for him had 
no rays of hope. 

In the Lutheran Church the past year has been notable 
for the death of no less than three Presidents of the General 
Council, the Rev. Dr. J. A. Seiss, who died in Philadelphia 
on June 20th at the age of 81 ; the Rev. Dr. E. F. Moldenke, 
who died in New York on June 25th at the age of 67 ; and the 
Rev. Dr. Carl Swensson, who died in California on the 16th 
of last February, in the prime of life, at the age of 46 years. 
To this list must be added the Rev. Frank Richards, D. D., 
former President of the District Synod of Ohio, whose son is 
a missionary to Porto Rico, and G. W. Frederick, former pub- 
lisher of The Lutheran and of much sound Lutheran literature 
that the English Church now possesses. All these men were 
prominent at the meetings of the General Council, and to them 
must be added the Rev. W. F. Ulery, a veteran in the service 
of the Pittsburg Synod, who died at Greensburg at the age of 
74 years, and the Rev. Prof. J. Steinhaeuser, D. D., who died at 
Allentown at the age of 54 years, the Rev. Dr. J. M. Anspach, 
who died at ^'illiamsport at the age of 63 years, Rev. A. Det- 
zer, Sr., of the Missouri Synod, who died at Niles Center at 
the age of 86 years, the Rev. O. Leopold, at the age of 75 years, 
and the Rev. G. E. Youngdahl, at Colorado Springs, at the age 
of 42 years. 

Extended mention has already been made of the death 
of Dr. Seiss. Dr. Swensson, who was born in Sugar Grove, 
Pennsylvania, graduated in 1877 at Angustana, entered the 
Royal College in Upsala, and was ordained in 1879 in Chicago. 



IOI 

He took charge of the Bethany Church in Lindsborg, and in 
1881 founded Bethany College. In 1893 Upsala University 
conferred on him the degree of Ph. D., and in 1901 he was 
made a knight of the Royal Order of the North Star by the 
King of Sweden. He was the author of several books, and 
very active in social and political circles in Kansas. He was 
the leader of the distinctivelv American view in Swedish- 
American circles 

Among the deaths of prominent business men during the 
year was that of Mr. Oliver Williams, of Catasauqua, a former 
president of the National Iron Association, and a friend of the 
Presidents Lincoln and Arthur. He was a member of the Lu- 
theran Church, and a very ardent co-worker in the establish- 
ment of the new Lutheran. Members of the General Council 
will remember him as he arose at the meetings of that body 
to which he was a delegate for many years, and with short, 
sharp, nervous speeches made good natured hits at the clergy. 

On the 7th of December, Prof. Augustus L. Graebner, 
one of the most valuable members of the Missouri Synod, and 
a Professor in the Seminary at St. Louis, died at the age of 
only 55 years. Prof. Graebner was an overworked man, and 
though he went abroad in search of health, was too far gone 
in disease to be restored by his trip. He was born in Michi- 
gan in 1849, studied in the parochial schools in St. Louis, went 
to College at Ft. Wayne, and was a graduate of Concordia 
.Seminary. One of the ablest men that that institution has 
produced, in 1887 he became Professor of Ecclesiastical His- 
tory. He was a fine writer with a trenchant and eloquent 
style, and a most devoted propagandist of Missourian princi- 
ples. He was the founder of its English Theological Quarterly, 
and an adaptor of its doctrines to the English situation. Prof. 
Graebner was by taste a historian, and would have left one or 
two imperishable historical works to the Lutheran Church, if 
his judgment had not been so thoroughly biased by a tendons 
in favor of Missouri. Indefatigable as an investigator, charming 
and spirited as a composer, the vice, of his work was a use of 
all historical facts to support the theories of his Church. He 
was not merely an advocate, stating the facts and construing 



102 

them in a certain direction ; but he was a partisan in the most 
detrimental sense of the word. In this spirit he came east and 
made a splendid investigation of original documents, especially 
those in the archives at Gettysburg, and some connected with 
the history of the New York Ministerium. But when his 
"Geschichte der Lutherisehen Kirche in Amerika" came out, 
one of the sprightliest and most vivacious works that has ever 
been written on American soil, well organized and abounding" in 
a wealth of historical material.it was found alas! not to be re- 
lied on either for its facts or for its conclusions. What mag- 
nificent men. of sound and victorious faith, of keen and irre- 
sistible intellect. Missouri might produce, if they were not so 
trained as to regard fidelity to their organization and its past 
as of more importance than fidelity to actual historical truth. 

THE year {904 has been fruitful in invention and mechani- 
cal progress, and we should like to speak of inventions, 
if there were space, especially of the new style, of mo- 
tive power, which may work a revolution and economy in all 
use of machinery and kinds of locomotion, viz, the Turbine 
Engine; also of the proposed substitution of electricity for 
steam on the Lackawanna and the New York Central Rail- 
roads, of electrical progress during the year, of wireless teleg- 
raphy, of the use of concrete in structural work, and especially 
of the great curved concrete dam nearly 500 feet long, erected 
in Australia, of aeronautic attempts and failure, of the mono- 
rail system, of transit by subways, and of new adaptations of 
the telephone. 

We should like to speak of the bearing of the discovery 
of radium, and the extensive investigations that have been con- 
ducted with it during the past year, of its successful use in an 
instrument to measure electricity, of the researches of Sir W il- 
liatn Ramsay, who intimates that the ordinary chemical ele- 
ments may be the products of the breaking down of radio- 
active elements of high atomic weight: and of the possibili- 
ties of the transmutation of substance. 

\\ e should also like to speak of the tendency to introduce 
an acceptance of evolution into the elementary schools, as in- 



103 

dicated for instance in the following extract of a London 
speaker: "I think," he says, "the time has arrived when all 
educationalists should consider the desirability of teaching the 
principles of evolution. I believe that all the schools accept 
the evolution theory and that it would not be difficult to pre- 
sent the facts in such a way that children could understand 
them." We have spoken elsewhere of the effect of the intro- 
duction of critical and evolutionary principles into the schools 
of the land. 

LET us turn for a moment to archaeology. Prof. Harnack 
has been appearing in America on return from the St. 
Louis Exposition and has lectured before Harvard Uni- 
versity, the Boston University, and the Union Theological 
Seminary of New York. 

Friederich Delitzsch, the noted Babylonian scholar, who 
has just returned to Berlin from the field of his oriental inves- 
tigations, will visit this country in February and lecture in the 
leading American Universities. 

At Baalbek the German Orientalists have continued to 
excavate the ancient temples, and are also conducting work at. 
Palmyra, in the Hauran, and at Gerash, and Aman. They 
have been working at Mesheytta, in old Moab, east of the 
Jordan. This remarkable ruin in the desert was presented out- 
right to the German Emperor by the Sultan. Under the di- 
rection of Dr. Shumacher, the remarkable stone facade of the 
great enclosure of the Khan or palace has been taken down, 
boxed and sent to Berlin to form one of the adornments of the 
new Friederich Museum. 

The German Oriental Society, of which the Emperor is a 
member and to whose work he is one of the largest contribu- 
tors, in connection with the Palsestina Verein, has been exca- 
vating on what is supposed to be the site of the ancient Me- 
giddo on the southern edge of the plain of Esdraelon and at 
the neighboring Leggun. 

The same Society has been continuing its work in Egypt 
and Babylonia. It has been engaged in a systematic excava- 
tion of the ruins of Babylon for the last five years, with minor 



104 

excavations at Borsippa, the sister city of Babylon, and in 
Fara. and Abnhatab, two ancient cities to the south of Baby- 
lon, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Excavations have 
also been begun at the ancient Ashur, and the historical im- 
portance of this city has been found to be very great. A suc- 
cession of palaces has been discovered in Ashur. This city 
continued to be occupied as a resident city for the ancient kings 
into the Seventh Century B. C. 

THE practical effort and energies of the Church in Chris- 
tian countries show no signs of diminution. Dr. Car- 
roll has given us an estimate in figures of the adher- 
ents of various forms of belief in the United States, together 
with their increase in membership during the past year (that 
is 1903). He tells us that American Catholics number 9,891,- 
869 communicants ; increase during the last year 166,110; the 
Methodists 6,192,494, increase 112,946; the Baptists 4,725,775, 
increase 61,146: the Lutherans 1,715,910, increase 39,567; the 
Presbyterians 1,661.522, increase 26,506; the Episcopal 782,- 
543, increase 15,209; the Congregationalists 659.704, increase 
15,209; the Reformed 390,578, increase 5540. The Quakers 
lost 2069 members in the last five years, the Free Will Bap- 
tists lost 19, 655 in the last five years, the Salvation Army 
lost 15,000, and the Christian Scientists lost 10,000. The 
Mormons number 342,072 members, an increase of 1982 dur- 
ing the last five years. 

In commenting on Dr. Lenkers statement that the Lu- 
theran Church in the world numbers over six million more 
white members than all other members of the Protestant 
Churches taken together, Lehre und Wehre says : "Dr. Lenker, 
like many others in the General Synod and in the 
General Council, is suffering from the disease of distention. 
For instance, he counts among the Lutherans not only every- 
thing that has legs in Lutheran lands, but also the twenty mil- 
lion members of the Prussian Union. But this is un-Luth- 
eran, and is one proof out of many that the true Lutheran 
Church is much smaller than the number of those who claim 
the name. Lutherans must not desire to be considered im- 



io5 

portant in the line of large figures but in the line of the great 
truths which she represents and which cause her to be the true 
visible Church even where she is a small and despised little 
Hock." We agree entirely with the wholesome portion of this 
declaration. Truth, that is, sound doctrine, is first and fore- 
most : numbers are secondary. But our trouble with the state- 
ment is that it does not declare the whole truth. If Brother 
Lenker's mind is suffering from the disease of external disten- 
tion, the Missourian mind is suffering from the disease of in- 
ternal distention : it believes, with reference to the Lutheran 
Church, that it is the whole thing. Qualitative exaggeration 
of one's own importance, is not less unfortunate than quanti- 
tative exaggeration. Humility is a necessary quality even in 
the true flock. 

The Methodist Church at the meeting of its General Con- 
ference at Los Angeles opposed changing the position of the 
church on meting out solid discipline to those enjoying im- 
proper amusements. The vote on this question was 441 to 
188. The same church in Brooklyn early last spring almost 
unanimously acquitted Dr. Borden P. Bowne, one of Method- 
ism's philosophical scholars and college men, of the charge of 
heresy. Dr. Bowne is professor of Philosophy in Boston Uni- 
versity, and is the author of works in Metaphysics, Psycho- 
logical Theory, the Philosophy of Theism, and the Princi- 
ples of Ethics. He approaches theology from a philosophical 
standpoint, and is attempting to give an adequate background 
in theology and philosophy to modern sociological and re- 
ligious problems. His recent thinking has been far from or- 
thodox, but so has that of many other Methodist leaders. 

Rev. Beeby, pastor of the Episcopal Church in Birming- 
ham, recently denied the Virgin birth of our Lord in the Hib- 
bert Journal. His bishop, Dr. Gore, requested his resigna- 
tion in consequence of his having taken this position, and 
Beeby handed it in. Canon Henson, of London, then came 
forward and accused bishop Gore of tyranny, declaring that 
"many of the clergy are not able to assent to all the statements 
in the Creeds of the Church, and if a man by accepting the 
Creeds as a whole declares himself heart and soul a Christian 



io6 

that test ought to be sufficient." The world over, the battle 
with rationalism within the church is raging. 

We should like to follow the work of Dr. Harper and his 
University , if there were space, and especially the discussion 
awakened by Dr. Harper when he stated that neither the Theo- 
logical Seminaries nor the churches can be relied on for the 
solution of religious problems. We content ourselves with 
quoting a single criticism : "If we are to learn from Germany 
how the university does this important work, we are inclined 
to think that the university raises more problems than it solves, 
that it chills rather than warms the religious life, and that its 
work is theoretical rather than practical." 

It is the fundamentals of evangelical Christianity, and not 
external problems of church work, polity and worship that 
need the chief emphasis in the Christian pulpit. While the 
Church is adjusting its fringes, reason is chloroforming its 
vital organs. Professor Osier, the newly appointed Regius 
Professor at Oxford University, delivering the annual lecture 
on immortality at Harvard University, recently drew atten- 
tion to the growing indifference of educated people toward 
everything connected with the future life. Other writers, for 
instance, Dr. John Watson, of Liverpool, and Dr. George 
Gordon, of the old South Church, Boston, are emphasizing 
the same fact. People seem to be less solicitous about the 
future even at death than about the welfare of their kindred, 
their business and those whom they leave behind. So many 
doubt the future life, and have no strong confidence respecting 
it, that a paralysis has come over an intelligent and thinking 
people with regard to it. The typical American of culture, 
with his physician, attempts to hide the shadow of death from 
those who are taken with mortal illness, and the faithful pas- 
tor, even in the dying hour, sometimes by order of the trained 
nurse, is excluded from the presence of his parishioner. The 
family, at the funeral, through the undertaker, provides the 
choir, selects the hymns, and intimates to the clergy that the 
deceased has been of exceedingly virtuous disposition, and 
must, on the day of the funeral, be ranged with the saints in 
heaven. The whole conception of grief is subjective, and often 



ie>7 

divorced from God and the Church. One of the merits of the 
Roman Church (though the means, viz, the mass, is not com- 
mendable) is its insistence on an objective and churchly rela- 
tion of the soul to God in death. 

Our readers in the East probably do not realize the great 
gains that are being made by the Disciples of Christ as they 
are found throughout the middle West. No less than 16,500 
delegates are said to have met in St. Louis this Fall at the In- 
ternational Missionary Convention of this denomination. This 
church is less than a hundred years old, and has a membership 
of 1,200,000, and a net gain of 40,000 during the last year. 

The Fourth International World's Sunday-School Con- 
gress was held during this present year in the city of 
Jerusalem. English and American delegates sailed thither 
on two German steamers. The session was held from the 16th 
to the 18th of April in a tent near the Damascus Gate, and 
was attended by from 1500 to 1800 people. Seventeen denom- 
inations were represented and at the close the Apostles Creed 
and the Lord's Prayer were used in common. The Lord's 
Supper was celebrated in a common way, twenty or twenty- 
five ministers distributing the elements. Good Lutherans 
could not have joined in this communion. The reports show- 
ed that the bulk of the work represented was done in America 
and England. A committee was apointed for the establish- 
ment of Sunday-Schools in the Holy Land. Calcutta was re- 
garded as possibly the next place of meeting. 

The first International Congress of the Salvation Army 
took place in London last July, and not less than six thousand 
representatives, from all lands, were present. The Salvation. 
Army is said to number more than a million. Among those 
present were Japanese, New Zealanders and persons from 
India. General Booth, who was present in person, was re- 
ceived by the king of England, who assured him that he re- 
garded the Salvation Army as an important element in the 
religip-ethical education of the people. The Army is dis- 
tributed throughout forty-nine lands, and devotes itself espe- 
cially to the recovery of drunkards and the fallen. Its methods 
often provoke irreverence even among the ignorant. An 



io8 

Italian fruit vender, with a stand across the street from the 
writer's desk, when he hears the shouting and drumming of 
the approaching Salvation Army, frequently admonishes pass- 
ers by, in sarcasm, "Why don't you go up to the corner and get 
your soul saved?" 

In Norway the battle between the old and the new has 
continued incessantly throughout the year. Prof. Jeager (Dr. 
Jur.) made an address before the Association of Norwegian 
students, taking as his theme "Orthodoxy the enemy of Chris- 
tianity." Jeager is one of the most popular young professors. 
What made this address particularly significant was the fact 
that Jeager was formerly an outspoken adherent of the Danish 
Agnostic Dr. Brandes and here openly renounced Agnosticism 
and accepted Christianity. 

Jeager said, "There never has been a thoughtful materialist 
who has not been obliged to come to the stunning result, that 
all our life is without a meaning. But this view is the most 
absurd one possible. It is a foolish imagination to suppose 
that Agnosticism can ever become the religion of youth. Per- 
sonally I am of the opinion that those who are thoroughly im- 
bued with the spirit of Christianity possess a goodness of feel- 
ing and instinct, and a purity of morality, and a degree of cour- 
age and consolation in darker hours, as well as a joy in life and 
a fearlessness in death, that cannot be found elsewhere." 

At the same time, Prof. Jeager declaimed against Church 
dogmas, particularly against the orthodox doctrine of Hell (ut 
sine fine crucientur. Augustana XVII) and the doctrines of 
the absolute divinity of Christ, and the Trinity. He tried to 
preserve something more than mere manhood for Christ, as 
over against the rationalists. Christ to him is the ideal and 
therefore the divine Man. In his address Prof. Jeager showed 
strong traces of the influence of the Swedish thinker Victor 
Rydberg. 

His address had no sooner been made public than it was 
violently attacked, particularly his attitude toward the Luth- 
eran Confession. The conflict has been made more intense 
by the issue of two writings on Old Testament criticism, the 
one by Faerden, on the Old Testament in the light of more re- 



109 

cent investigation, and the other by Prof. Michelet, on Old 
Sanctuaries in a New Light. Both works are popular presen- 
tations of Wellhausen. Faerden writes with thrilling convic- 
tion and in a glittering style. Faerden is one of the most 
highly respected clergy of Norway, and Michelet, who seeks 
to bring out the devotional power inherent in the new views, 
is the only Old Testament professor in the University. Bishop 
Heuch, whom we have already noticed at length in an article 
of this Review as the head of the Conservative tendency, died 
on the 3d of February in this last year. 

IT was our intention to indicate the development of theo- 
logical literature, in its characteristic publications, during 
the year, but its discussion will have to be postponed, for 
the present at least, from lack of space. 

AS we take a parting glance, perhaps for the last time, at 
the events, issues, struggles, Providences, calamities, 
tendencies, developments and advances, and warnings 
of the year 1904, realizing that great men have fallen all along 
the line, and that our day and generation has already made a 
perceptible inroad on the reserves of opportunity accorded to 
the Twentieth Century, it behooves us to stand in our faith, 
earnest in spirit, lifting up the hands which hang down, and 
the feeble knees, and to run with patience the race that is set 
before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our 
faith, that the name of our Lord may be glorified in us, and 
we in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 




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